


Diamond Authority

by pharmakon



Series: Diamond Authority [1]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Homeworld is Horrible, Politics, Rose Quartz is Pink Diamond Theory, Spoilers for Episode: s05e18 A Single Pale Rose, Spoilers for Episode: s05e23-24 Reunited, Worldbuilding, follows canon up to "Reunion"
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-06-14 05:50:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 58,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15382071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pharmakon/pseuds/pharmakon
Summary: Steven's two guards were frozen with shock. Steven said, trying to think like Garnet, "Have... have you told anyone else about this? Who else, um, knows?"The Agate said, eyes widening, "Only my Pearl, a Peridot, and myself, my Diamond. And the Pearl can be shattered.""That won't be necessary," Steven said quickly. "Just, don't tell anyone else, okay? The Diamonds have just. Extended their trip. So they'll be gone a while longer." He bit his lip. "We'll just have to make sure we find them." Soon. He hoped."Understood. And until then... I, and all of Homeworld and the Gem Empire, am at your service. Pink Diamond, we await your commands."(Or: White Diamond hasn't been on Homeworld for millennia; Blue and Yellow Diamond just disappeared along with her. Naturally, command of the Empire falls to Pink Diamond. Or rather, it falls to Steven.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably be jossed by the next episode, but c'est la vie.

Blue Diamond stopped just in front of her palanquin and stared down at Steven in obvious surprise. Even without millennia of grief weighing her down, her face still looked worn, so habituated to sadness that it didn't know what other expressions to take, so even when she was startled she still bowed her head in grief. Steven felt a pang of sympathy. "Hey, Blue! Where are you going?" He waved a greeting at Blue Diamond's Pearl and at the Quartz guards, too, and the Pearl bowed her head in acknowledgement. "I know I wasn't supposed to visit for a few more days, but I thought I'd come early since the Gems are busy on a mission. Did I... interrupt you or something? I can come back later..."

He couldn't help sounding a little nervous. The Diamonds were so huge, and they had invaded Earth, and this specific Diamond had even kidnapped his Dad! But then again, Peridot had kidnapped  _him,_ and Lapis had stolen the ocean, and Bismuth had tried to shatter him because he wouldn't kill other gems. And if _they_ were all his friends, the Diamonds could be, too. Even if they only tolerated him and the Earth and his family and the Off-Colors because his mom had been Pink Diamond, and because she'd given Steven her gem.

Man, his life had gotten really complicated lately. He even had to commute between _planets_ now!

The diamond tilted her head. "I am leaving for another galaxy," she said after a moment. "Something... has come up on one of Yellow's colonies, and she has requested that I assess the situation and give my opinions in person."

Steven looked up at her. "Oh. Is there any way I can help? I don't think my family would let me go to a new planet, but I can always ask." Well, actually they'd been kind of against his going to Homeworld alone in the first place, and had only given in because it meant the Diamonds would leave Earth alone. And they'd grudgingly agreed to let the Diamonds put in a direct warp link between Beach City and Homeworld, so Steven could go back and forth between the planets whenever he wanted... His dad had called it, jokingly, an intergalactic custody battle. _Literally._ But Steven could still ask, even if the answer was probably no. Garnet was a sucker for puppy dog eyes.

Blue smiled softly, though her eyes hardened at the mention of the Crystal Gems. "No, Pi-- _Steven_. You won't be needed." She kneeled down and picked Steven up in her palm. "Actually, I had meant to be back before your return. But while you're here, I have a favor to ask of you."

"What is it?" Steven asked nervously. If she wanted him to colonize a planet or do something bad, he was gonna have to say no, and think of a way to explain why that wouldn't make her lose her temper and break off the truce. He wasn't sure how he'd do that.

"At the current moment," Blue started, "White Diamond is off-world, and Yellow-- soon to be joined by myself-- is visiting a far-off colony. That leaves you as the only Diamond on Homeworld, if only for a few days. And it is... irresponsible, to leave our planet leaderless." She raised a hand to preempt Steven's interjection. "Do not worry, Steven," she said. "You won't be required to administrate anything, or to make any laws. You'll simply be around as a figurehead-- a reminder that the Diamonds are still here. While we do not make public our every departure from Homeworld, we can't risk being found missing should any trouble occur. As you've seen..." Her face twisted with grief. "... our gems do not respond well to the loss of a Diamond. Should we be absent for a major event, and should that absence be discovered... the result would be pandemonium. The presence of at least one of us, even one as young as you, is a defense against such a panic. That is why I would like you to stay on Homeworld until my return."

Steven thought about it. "I'd have to leave a note for the Gems," he said aloud, "and for my Dad, and everyone, so they'd know I couldn't go on missions or help out with Gem monsters for a couple days." He had to stifle a frown at the thought of the Corrupted Gems; even the Diamonds were still working on a cure. "But if you need me to stay on Homeworld and be a Diamond, I can do it."

Blue Diamond smiled again, just as faint, and touched a finger to Steven's cheek. "Before, you would have jumped at this chance to prove your worth as a ruler. You've changed so much, Pink." Her eyes saddened. "You just don't remember how." She carefully placed Steven back on the ground. "Thank you... _Steven_. We won't be gone long."

Steven smiled up at her. "No problem, Blue." 

He watched the palanquin leave, then turned to the Quartz guard-- an Amethyst?-- who had been left behind. "So I guess I'm staying here for a few days," he said awkwardly. "Are you, uh. Are you supposed to guard me?" Every other visit since the Diamonds had come to Earth had been spent in their presence, with their guards. He'd never actually been alone on Homeworld, with just the Court gems to guide him. Wow, this was gonna be _weird_.

The Amethyst saluted again, looking taken aback at being addressed. "Um-- yes, my Diamond!" Her gem was on her left shoulder, almost covered by a thick curl of hair. The diamond on her uniform was pink. 

"Have I met you before?" Steven asked curiously. He didn't remember having any gems assigned to him at all, but... "You look really familiar." The Amethyst opened her mouth. "Wait, don't tell me-- you're one of Amethyst's family, from the Zoo! Uh, 8XH?"

The Amethyst blushed. "8XJ, my Diamond." Then she added hurriedly, bringing up her hands, "But you can call me 8XH if that's what you want!"

"Wha--? Oh, no, no, I just wanted to see if I could get your name right! Are you guys not in the Zoo anymore? I can't wait to tell Amethyst, you guys really hit it off!"

"Well, uh." The Amethyst rubbed the back of her neck. "We were Pink Diamond's troops before we were Blue Diamond's. So we got transferred here, when you came back." She dropped suddenly to her knees like she was praying, looking Steven in the eye. "My Diamond! If we'd known who you were when we saw you in the Zoo, we never would have pretended we were gonna get you in trouble! We would never have played a joke on someone of your stature! Please forgive us!"

Steven's eyes widened. "Whoa, uh, it's okay! I didn't know my mom was Pink Diamond then either! I thought she was Rose Quartz!" He laughed. "I think we were all caught by surprise. The Gems definitely were."

"Ha, yeah, I bet 8XM's face was _epic_." 8XJ flushed again. "My Diamond."

"You don't have to call me that," Steven offered. "You can just call me Steven, like everyone else does."

8XJ frowned. "That's disrespectful, isn't it, my Diamond? It's not... proper protocol, or whatever."

Steven grinned and nudged her, and she startled. "Yyyyeah, it's not proper protocol, but neither was helping me out when I was getting my dad back from the Zoo, or not ratting out Amethyst when she turned back from being big. And I'm a Diamond, right? So if I say you can call me Steven, you can't get in trouble for it! You guys were really nice at the Zoo, when you helped us escape. I don't wanna treat you guys like you're worth less than me."

"But we are worth less than you...  _Steven._ That's why we're your guards."

Steven shook his head, dismissing the whole concept. "No. You're my _friends_. All of you. But-- thanks for being my guards, too. It's nice to see someone I know here who isn't a Diamond."

8XJ started to grin. "I'll be sure to tell the other quartzes, then, my-- Steven."

"Okay! I can't wait to tell Amethyst you guys are here now-- oh yeah, I need to send a note back to Earth, to tell them I'll be here for a few days! Can you warp things without warping yourself?"

"I think there's message bots you can use," 8XJ said, frowning in concentration. A passing gem scowled at her addressing Steven so directly, and she fell back a few steps so she could walk behind him. "If you wanted, you could ask a Peridot near the warp pads about one."

"Yeah, that'd be perfect! Thanks, 8XJ." After all, Steven reasoned, there was no reason he'd have to go over there in person, since he'd promised to stay on Homeworld for the Diamonds' absence. It would only be a few days.

*

A week later, Steven was biting his lip and pacing around Pink Diamond's quarters, alternately staring up at the murals of his mom and casting agitated glances at the entrance to the chambers. "She said she'd be back by now!" he burst out. "At least one of them would be back-- gems are starting to send me paperwork, Jay! I can't even  _read_ gem!" His voice rose into a wail. "She said they were just checking on a colony, right?

8XJ scratched her head. "Yeah, that should've been it, from what I heard. Maybe they had engine troubles?" 

Carnelian, the other guard on duty, rolled her eyes. "What, like they wouldn't have Peridots to fix that in a split second? Maybe they just got caught up in bureaucracy. You know, higher-up stuff."

 "But they didn't even send any messages!" Steven said worriedly. "And the Peridot by the warp pads said she'd tried to track the Diamond communicators' signal--" and she'd sounded so frightened when she'd told him, too, like he was gonna poof her just because she showed initiative-- "and all she got was me! We can't even contact them! I can't stay here forever, I gotta go back to Earth and help the Gems and see my dad and Connie and everyone. I can't just leave them!"

His latest message had just been a reassurance that he was just staying a little longer and that everything was fine. Garnet had just sent back two words (BE CAREFUL) among everyone else's letters. Lars had said the Off-Color gems were settling in well, and Connie had said she'd learned a new sword trick and hoped he'd be back soon. Steven just wished he could see everyone in person soon. 

"But you can't just leave Homeworld, either," Carnelian said. "Well, I mean, you're a _Diamond_ , you can do whatever you want, but gems _do_ keep sending you paperwork. Doesn't that kinda stuff build up?"

Steven kept pacing. "It is building up! But I can't read any of it!" He paused, then whirled around. "Wait-- Jay! Carnelian! Can you read it to me? Out loud?"

8XJ looked panicked. "Uh, sure, if you want us to, um, read it, and do it, that's what we'll do--"

"That's kind of a Pearl's job, though," Carnelian cut in hurriedly. "Like, paperwork and opening doors and stuff, right? Every Diamond has a Pearl."

"Yeah!" 8XJ agreed. "You should get a Pearl! I mean, if you want to. Then it can deal with all the paperwork and stuff for you, like the other Diamonds' Pearls do. So you'd only have to deal with the important stuff."

"I' don't think I'm comfortable with that," Steven said, frowning. "Pearl never liked being ordered around by other gems, and Holly Blue Agate was really mean about her, like she thought she couldn't do anything without orders. I don't want to _own_ anyone. Pearls are people too."

The Quartzes stared at him blankly. " _Someone_  has to do all the forms and stuff, though, right? That's what Pearls are made for. And-- and she could explain what the forms are talking about sometimes, too, if those things were beneath your notice before."

"Ugh. I'll see, I guess." Steven shuddered. "I just hope Blue and Yellow are back before I have to deal with everything."

A furious knocking started up at the chamber door. 8XJ and Carnelian jumped to attention, weapons at the ready, and Carnelian snuck forward to open the door at Steven's nod. A yellow Agate stood at the other side, trembling like a strong wind could blow her over. "My Diamond!" She saluted. "I have... terrible news!"

"What is it?" Steven stammered. Were the Diamonds shattered somehow? Was that why they hadn't come back? 

The Agate bowed, tears leaking out of her eyes. Steven felt his blood freeze. "The colony which both Blue and Yellow Diamond were visiting has lost contact with the rest of the Empire, and seems to have been destroyed. While many gems were recovered, the Diamonds themselves, and their retinues, have disappeared. There are no signs as to where they might have gone. They are... missing in action, my Diamond. Not even White Diamond can be contacted."

Steven's two guards were frozen with shock. Steven said, trying to think like Garnet, "Have... have you told anyone else about this? Who else, um, knows?"

The Agate said, eyes widening, "Only my Pearl, a Peridot, and myself, my Diamond. And the Pearl can be shattered."

"That won't be necessary," Steven said quickly. "Just, don't tell anyone else, okay? The Diamonds have just, um. Extended their trip. So they'll be gone a while longer." He bit his lip. "We'll just have to make sure we find them." Soon. He hoped.

"Understood. And until then... I, and all of Homeworld and the Gem Empire, am at your service. Pink Diamond, we await your commands."

Steven gulped. The Gems weren't going to like _this_.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting more complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm... really, really surprised by how much attention that first chapter got. Anyway, thanks to everyone who left kudos or comments. I don't think this story's gonna go exactly like you might think it will, but I'll do my best to make it entertaining nonetheless.

 

8XJ nodded urgently at Steven, who crept out of Pink Diamond's chambers while 8XH argued with an irate Emerald. "I simply  _must_ have an audience with Pink Diamond! This is a very urgent situation, not that you would understand such matters, and I will  _not_ be denied! If Pink Diamond wishes me to deal with the situation myself, she can tell me that  _her_ self. You have no right to stop me from seeking an audience!"

"Look, she said she was gonna contemplate her next course of action and that she wasn't to be interrupted!"

"I can have you  _shattered_ for this--"

Steven ducked behind another column and grimaced; this was the most persistent gem yet. The Diamonds were nearly a week past their scheduled return date, according to most of the Courts, and while most of the gems could deal with it themselves, there were a few who seemed to think that without a Diamond's advice they couldn't do anything. Yellow had always complained about gems who couldn't-- to quote her annoyed rant-- find their gems if they were given coordinates and allowed to use both hands. Until now, Steven had honestly thought she'd just been exaggerating.

He didn't think anyone the Diamonds had assigned to him could be murdered on the say-so of some random Emerald, but maybe he should make sure they wouldn't get in trouble when he got back. 

Right now, though, Steven had a different mission in mind. 

He crept farther away from the argument, ducking through corridors and keeping out of sight of courtiers and technicians. The whole thing where he was Pink Diamond wasn't well known, Blue Diamond had said, for security reasons, but the knowledge of Pink Diamond's return had trickled through all of Homeworld by now. If he was discovered trying to leave for Earth, when he was the only Diamond on-planet, he'd have a lot of explaining to do. So he couldn't be discovered, or things would get really awkward and weird. 

Good thing he'd been on stealth missions with the Crystal Gems before, right?

The warp pad to Earth was in his sight when a tall blue Agate suddenly rounded the corner, and Steven had to dive into one of the service hallways to avoid her gaze. Then footsteps started to echo down that same hallway, and he dashed further into the maze of corridors, slamming his hand onto the wall to open a sealed door and closing it behind him. The footsteps paused at the other side of the door, then slowly moved away. 

"Whew," Steven breathed out, " _that_ was close." He sank back against the door and tried to catch his breath. These corridors seemed to go on for miles.

After a long moment, he realized he wasn't alone. There was a row of cells along the wall, each as blank as the one he'd been kept in for his trial, though they didn't look quite so high tech. That made sense, he guessed, since they'd thought he was his mom and also a war criminal at the time. The two gems in the cells-- a Lapis Lazuli and a tannish white gem with jagged hair-- didn't seem like they were that threatening.

"Uh," he stammered, "hi? I'm Steven." 

The Lapis Lazuli's eyes went wide, and she surged up from where she was sitting to press her hands against the barrier. "What-- how did you get in here? Are you an  _organic?_ What are you doing on Homeworld, are you going on trial too?" Her hair was longer than Lapis's, and curlier, streaming down her back in a loose-ribboned braid. Her dress flowed all the way down to her ankles.

"Lapis, shut up!" the other gem hissed. Her jagged white bangs half-covered her gem, a cloudy white-tan stone that took the place of her right eye. "She can't be an organic, how would she have gotten here? And of course she's not a prisoner. She's on the other side of the glass."

The Lapis squinted her eyes and tapped the barrier again. "She looks like an organic. Hey, could you get us out of here? We won't hurt you, we just need out, we promise!"

"Um..."

"Oh, like she's actually gonna listen to a couple of  _condemned prisoners--_ but sure! Knock yourself out! It's not like we have anything else to lose!" The other gem pulled at her hair. "We're dead anyway! We're gonna  _die, die, die_  and there's nothing we can do about it!"

"What?" Steven asked, staring between the two of them. "Why? Why would they shatter you? W-why are you condemned?" Had they shattered someone? That's why he had almost been executed... but then again, Homeworld killed gems for a lot of terrible reasons. 

"Because," the tannish gem gritted out, "we're--" She cut off and froze, drawing back into her cell. "Oh, stars-- quick, go hide!"

Steven hid behind another column just as the doors slid open again. "Would you two  _shut up?_ " the Jasper growled. "You're always in here yammering away, it makes me glad I won't have to listen to you much longer." He tiptoed further back as the Jasper's shadow slid by his feet. "Your kind makes me  _sick._ "

The Lapis stuck out her tongue. "Yeah, well I could say the same about you,  _ugly!"_ The Jasper slammed her fist against the barrier, and the Lapis barely flinched. "You can't touch us in here! Go on and yell, you jerk, we need something to stave off the boredom anyway."

Steven couldn't see the other prisoner, but he heard her muffled groan. The Jasper snarled, "Laugh all you want, traitor. You won't be laughing after tomorrow." She stalked back to the panel by the door. "In  _fact--_ " She froze. "Oh, you lucky pebbles. You're so dead. You've been observed by someone with higher clearance than even I'm allowed to talk to. The Diamonds must have sent someone to evaluate you  _personally._ Hope you didn't try to escape or anything." She laughed roughly. Steven saw the Lapis tense up.

The Jasper walked forward again, towering over the prisoners. "The Diamonds are gonna tear you apart," she growled. Steven felt a cold anger well in his chest. His fists clenched without his input. The Lapis looked so _scared,_ and her friend wasn't making a sound... "They're gonna rip you to pieces and make the other  _watch._ They're gonna chip you down to nothing, shard by shard, and harvest whatever dregs are left. They're gonna make it public, even, and you abominations will deserve it--!"

The world glowed bright pink, and the Jasper screeched in rage as she was thrown hard against the wall. Steven didn't wait around for her to realize what had hit her; he was out and running, torn between going back to help those gems and making his way to Earth. But he couldn't go back... he'd have to go back for them tomorrow, after he'd told his family what was happening. Then he could help those gems.

_And hadn't they seemed like Pearl and Amethyst, on Peridot's ship, back to back with a wall between them and enemies all around...?_

"Focus, Steven," he whispered to himself, and finally managed to sneak onto the warp pad. With a flash of light, he was home.

*

He'd been right. The Gems really didn't take it well. 

"They  _what?"_ Pearl shrieked. "Steven, there's-- there's got to be some mistake. The Diamonds wouldn't just _disappear_."

"Uh, Pearl, from the sounds of it, I don't think it was really  _willing."_ Amethyst passed her potato chips to Steven. He shoved a handful of them in his mouth and chewed furiously. 

"Hold on, they left you in control of a whole empire?" Steven's dad cut in incredulously. He scratched at his stubble and frowned. "Isn't that, you know, kind of irresponsible? You're only fourteen!"

Steven grimaced. "I don't think they meant to be gone any longer than a couple days, Dad. This isn't how it was supposed to go." And he couldn't have stayed on Homeworld much longer without at least visiting Earth, anyway. He'd brought food and water and, uh, toilet paper... but the Diamonds weren't really used to organic beings visiting, and it showed. There weren't any places to take a  _shower._ And he'd had to wear the same shirt three days in a row.

"It had better not have been!" Pearl said hysterically. "Steven, Homeworld politics can be deadly, and they've hardly told you anything at all about them. This was the first time we'd let you stay for more than a day! I already disliked the Diamonds-- except you, of course-- but this really takes the cake. How could they have put you in this position?" She turned to Garnet and gestured wildly. " _Garnet_! You couldn't have-- foreseen this, somehow, or seen what happened to them?"

Garnet shook her head. "I had sensed that Steven might have to stay longer, but the reasons were... unclear. Still, the fact remains that right now, Steven is the de facto ruler of Homeworld." A pause. The Crystal Gems leaned in. "This could be advantageous."

"What, like he can stop all the colonies or something? 'Cause that's gonna be pretty hard to do," Amethyst pointed out. "It's not like they're gonna take everything you say as law just because you're a Diamond, right?"

"Homeworld gems practically worship the Diamonds. It could be easier to make a change than you'd think."

Pearl tapped her chin. "Well, you are supposed to be learning to lead..."

Steven shook his head. "If I change anything too much, the Diamonds won't trust me with Homeworld gems anymore. I don't think I can destroy everything they've built by myself. I'm... not sure I want to _try_. Not if it means losing their trust and maybe starting another war. This truce is important." He gave a sheepish smile. "Anyway... I don't think I'm cut out for politics! I might just make everything worse."

Greg said, "Yeah, I'm with you there, stewball. I don't think messing with Gem politics is the best idea. You can't even _read_ Gem!"

Garnet agreed, "That's definitely a problem. Pearl, weren't you teaching him?"

Pearl flushed. "Well, yes, of course, but we haven't gotten past the basics yet. With all this stuff with the Diamonds, there hasn't been much time!" She shuddered. "Who knows what the rest of the Gems will think of this development. We've barely gotten the Off-Colors to settle down as it is." And hadn't  _that_ been hard, with the outlaws arriving on Earth to find the Diamonds had beaten them there.

"I just wish I could take you guys with me," Steven admitted. "But Garnet, you just got back together, and they treat Pearls so badly on Homeworld... you think Bismuth or anyone would come?"

"Hey, what about me?" Amethyst clamored. She stood up straighter from the couch. "I could stay on Homeworld with you. It's not like we need everyone for every mission."

"Are you sure, Amethyst?" Pearl said dubiously. "I don't mean to offend, but you're not exactly... standard."

Amethyst blew a raspberry. "Yeah, maybe if I was just with, like, random gems. But these are my _Famethysts_. They're from the same Kindergarten I am! And that Carnelian's basically as short as me. No one's gonna notice another defective Quartz."

Garnet shrugged. "She does have a point. And it would be nice for you to have someone you know to guard you."

"Yeah! And I know those guys, they  _love_ me!"

"So it's settled then!" Pearl clapped her hands. "Amethyst can go guard Steven while he figures out where the Diamonds went, and we can remain here on Earth!" Her face fell. "This is going to be very unpleasant, isn't it. Steven, you had better visit as often as you can."

"I'm gonna have to come back for food, Pearl," Steven said with a laugh. "And to see Connie and Dad and you guys. It's just gonna be a lot harder to sneak away. I had to dodge a bunch of gems just now to get to the warp pad in the first place." He frowned. "I don't think I can say I'm  _contemplating_ forever."

His dad said reluctantly, "I guess you better get back, then, huh. It's a shame. I haven't seen you in a week!" He held out his arms for a hug, and Steven fell into them gladly. "Come back soon, stewball. And be careful!"

"Don't do anything reckless," Pearl admonished, looking from Steven to Amethyst. "Either of you!"

"And remember," Garnet said, crouching and putting her hands on Steven's shoulders. Steven felt the tightness in his chest loosen just from the calm she exuded. "We love you, Steven. And that will never change." She pushed a bag of supplies into his hands. "And don't forget to eat. Eating is important for humans."

"Thanks, Garnet," Steven said, melting a little from love. "And thanks, everyone. I promise I'll come back soon."

"Bye, y'all!" Amethyst yelled and waved, just before the warp pad whisked them away.

*

They managed to get back to Pink Diamond's chambers without any problems. 8XJ and 8XH stiffened into guarding positions, but relaxed with looks of relief as soon as Steven and Amethyst came into view, with 8XJ giving Amethyst a little wave. With them was the Agate who had told Steven about the Diamonds' disappearance, and a Pearl with her head gracefully bowed. Steven slowed, eyes wide, and said, "Uh, hey, Agate! Is this that Pearl you mentioned?"

"My Diamond." The Agate saluted. "Yes, this is my Pearl. I learned from your guards that you were in need of one, and I thought I might give you mine, for as long as you would like, or until you find a more suitable replacement." The Pearl, eyes down, stayed perfectly still. The Agate's face darkened. "Though, my Diamond, I must say that I now see my mistake. I can get you a more capable Pearl, and should have thought of that immediately.  _This_ Pearl was slated for shattering even before it decided to eavesdrop on my affairs. It's hardly worthy to serve a gem of _your_ stature."

Steven waved his hands urgently, trying to keep his alarm from showing on his face. "Oh, no, she's fine. You don't need to replace her or anything." He bit his lip. "Uh, thank you. For giving her to me."

The Agate bowed again. "The pleasure is mine, my Diamond." She waited. 8XH coughed, and Steven startled a little.

"Oh, um-- that will be all," he added. The Agate left as politely as she'd come, and Steven slumped as soon as she was gone from earshot.

"Are all Agates all like that?" he asked 8XJ helplessly. 

The Amethyst shook her head. "Nope! Some of them are worse." Amethyst started to snicker.

"Oh, yeah, by the way-- Amethyst's gonna be staying with you guys for a while. Like-- _undercover._ I hope that's okay."

"Of course it is!" Amethyst declared. "Right, guys?"

The two guards nodded. "Oh, yeah."

"You can take my shift sometimes!"

" _Please_ take my shift sometimes."

Steven turned his attention to the Pearl. Well... to Pearl, he guessed. Her hair was a rich chocolate brown, pulled up into a neat bun with a cascade of curly bangs flowing down one side of her face. Her skin, as delicate-looking as any other Pearl's, was only a shade lighter than her hair. Her dress was brown, too, ruffled and sheer, with a pink diamond insignia in the middle of her chest. She looked kind of like a porcelain doll. "I... didn't know you were already in my Court," he tried.

The Pearl kept her eyes down. "My Agate instructed me to take a form more suitable to your service, my Diamond. If it displeases you, I will of course have my form dissipated so that I may come back in one more acceptable to your tastes."

"Oh." Steven blanched. "So she poofed you? I'm sorry, that's terrible! Of course you don't have to do that again!" The Pearl's head jerked up, and she immediately lowered her eyes once again. "I really just needed someone to help out with paperwork and everything, since it's all kinda building up. I-- can you do that? Pearl?" He sighed. "Sorry, I already know a Pearl, this is gonna get confusing... is there something else I can call you? Or I can just call you Pearl if you want..."

The Pearl blinked and finally looked up. "My Diamond... I suppose you could call me by my more specific designation? I could be described by my design-- I'm a Chocolate Pearl, a variation designed to go better with owners with warmer color palettes who didn't wish to be too flashy."

Steven thought about it. It still really creeped him out how Pearls were just... designed, like they were fancy iPhones instead of people, but if she didn't care... "So you wouldn't mind if I called you Chocolate?"

A hint of spirit glinted in the Pearl's dark brown eyes. "No, my Diamond. I wouldn't mind at all." Steven relaxed, and Chocolate tilted her head, letting her bangs spill away from her face. Her gem gleamed on the side of her cheek. "Now, I don't mean to presume, but... you said something about paperwork?"

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Politics!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for all the kudos and comments! And the end notes will contain spoilers for the most recent episode, so don't read them if you haven't seen it.
> 
> Also, a mild abuse TW for this chapter, I think.

Newness. Light. Hands-- his hands?-- with fingers opening and closing, flexing and relaxing, grasping at his dress. Eyes, dazzled by brightness, gazing up and up and up at a pair of faces above him. Legs, unsteady and trembling, slowly pushing him upright. Slowly, the faces became clear: a giant woman, shrouded in blue, with rapturous eyes and a warm smile; another woman, just as large as the first and bright yellow, with a fierce expression and a habitual scowl that couldn't hide her curiosity.

The blue woman said, soft and fond, "Oh, Yellow, look at her. She's  _beautiful._ "

Harsher, from the other: "She's  _small._ Were we ever so tiny?" The yellow one reached down with one gargantuan hand and held it near Steven's face. He leaned into the touch, exploring the novel surface with his eyes. Everything felt so bright and wonderful.

"We were, Yellow. You just don't remember." A blue hand came down as well, and it scooped Steven up easily, bringing him closer to a long, regal face. A pair of somber eyes, lit with joy, regarded him. He tried to touch her face, utterly fascinated. The blue woman laughed. "Hello, Pink Diamond. Welcome to existence."

"There's no need to be sappy," the yellow woman snapped, but she leaned in closer besides. "Look at you, Pink. I know you were created with the capacity for speech. Why are you acting so simple? You should talk to us."

"Oh, Yellow, you're always so  _stern._ This is a new Diamond we're speaking to, not just another one of our gems. She'll have to learn just as we did."

"That hardly means she's unable to  _speak_."

Steven tried to make sounds with his mouth like they did. He made a high sound, then parroted happily, "Hello. Hello! I'm Pink Diamond?"

The yellow woman sighed. "Stars, we've created a simpleton."

" _Yellow!"_

"Yellow!" Steven cheered. "Hello, Yellow, hello, Blue! You're both so  _beautiful._ I love you!" He _did_ love them. It was the first emotion he'd ever felt, he thought, and it came so naturally. These people, his family, were holding him, and they shined, and they were _right there_ where he could touch them! Their auras, one golden and one royal blue, saturated the air. Around him, weak and fluttery like a baby bird, glowed a soft pink aura of his own. He could feel the two women's wonder and apprehension, could taste their relief at his being able to speak. He twirled in newborn delight. The whole world was _perfect_.

The blue woman's eyes melted. "We love you too, Pink. And we have  _so_ much to teach you."

"Yes," said the yellow woman reluctantly, her voice softening. "You'll have to be a strong leader someday."

Someone hummed thoughtfully behind them. Blue looked up sharply. "White." Steven felt confusion at her tone, which had gone from _nice_ to... something else. Something that made him ache, inside. "I think we've done well. Do you agree?"

Steven turned around, eyes wide and bewildered. A new aura gleamed behind him, bright and deadly as a star, and he felt the first inkling of what he couldn't yet recognize as _fear_. He shrank back into Blue's hands. 

The white woman regarded him passionlessly. "She  _does_ seem to fit specifications." She leaned in closer and stared with her crystalline eyes. "Are you _certain_ her creation was necessary?" One burning-bright hand reached out towards him, and Steven tried to hide behind two of Blue's fingers. He didn't want that hand to touch him. It would--and this was a word he didn't know, in the dream, a concept he only vaguely understood-- it would _hurt_.

Blue gently petted the top of Steven's head and said angrily, "Stop that, White. You're scaring her."

"There's... certainly no need for you to be so  _intense,"_ Yellow added in a placating tone. "But I  _am_ glad you decided to make an appearance." Her voice turned bitter. "Given your recent behavior, I wasn't sure what to expect."

White turned her searing stare to Yellow. "My recent... behavior?" The whole room brightened to blinding white.

Steven squeaked and covered his eyes, and Yellow said, almost stammering, "I don't mean any offense, White. Only that I wasn't sure your schedule would accommodate the birth of a new Diamond."

White said with an eerie smile, "We sacrificed a colony to grow her at its core, didn't we? Why shouldn't I check to see if that investment had borne fruit?"

"Of course that was the wisest course of action," Blue equivocated. Her hand rose up to shield Steven from White's view. "Though I must ask... do you still intend to leave Homeworld? You're so desperately needed here on-planet, and with the instability of the core--"

"That... can be taken care of, can't it? We have the technology," White said with that same terrible smile. "And my business off-planet cannot be put off. This is simply the way it will be." Her tone turned frosty. "I... trust... that you can be relied on to uphold with the safety and expansion of the Empire."

"Of course, White," Yellow said. "But you don't mean to say that you're leaving  _now?_ "

"Why shouldn't I?" White asked pleasantly. "There's nothing of much importance going on right now, is there?"

Steven felt Blue's aura go dark with stifled anger. "Well, then," Blue said softly. "Goodbye, White." She pulled her hood down from her head, revealing long white hair. Steven kind of wanted to touch it. "We will await your return."

"Yes," Yellow gritted out. "Goodbye, White."

White regarded them dispassionately. "Goodbye, Blue, Yellow... _Pink_." Then, gleaming, bright and distant as a star, White Diamond turned and walked to the door, and-- twitched. No, glitched, like a corrupted game, twisted into an agony of herself, into white noise, contorting into tangled light, brighter and brighter--

Steven woke up choked with tears, screaming his throat raw. Amethyst was shaking his shoulders and yelling. "Wake  _up,_ Steven! Wake up, it's just a stupid nightmare, come on--!"

8XH and Skinny Jasper ran into the room, weapons out. "What's going on? Where's the attack?" Skinny demanded shrilly. "Why is Pink Diamond  _screaming?"_

Steven tried to still himself and wiped his nose. "It's okay, guys," he choked out. "It's just a nightmare. They happen sometimes when you sleep."

8XH looked horrified. "Why would you sleep at all, then?"

Steven shrugged. "Sometimes the dreams are nice. Or I can contact peoples' minds in my dreams. It... doesn't seem to work with the Diamonds right now, though." He'd tried, a few days ago, when they'd run out of other options, but he hadn't been able to connect at all. This vision of his dead mom was the closest he'd come. "Actually... Amethyst? I think I just had another vision of Pink Diamond."

And of White Diamond. But he didn't think he'd share that part just yet.

*

Chocolate Pearl made her way down one of the service hallways, keeping her steps soft and her walking elegant. If she moved in a certain way, her taffeta skirt swirled around her knees _very_ nicely, and her bangs swished gracefully, adding just enough vivaciousness to her overall look, and-- well. A pretty Pearl was an invisible Pearl. And if she was going to work for Pink Diamond now, she would have to be cunning. The rest of the Courts might not like to acknowledge it, but all their petty politics and power games rested precariously on the rest of the Empire's hard work. If the Empire found out that the Diamonds were missing-- if the average  _gem_ found out-- Chocolate was reminded of an old saying about a Ruby fusion without its head. The whole thing just fell apart. The aristocrats, and all she'd ever known, would be caught in the crossfire.

More importantly,  _she_ would be caught in the crossfire. And Chocolate hadn't survived three owners and an order to be harvested to die now that she'd finally gotten a chance to prove her worth. Pink Diamond would be satisfied with her work whether she (he? This Diamond was confusing) liked it or not. Whether Chocolate was _defective_ or not. So there _._

Chocolate nodded at another Pearl as she went past, and reached out a hand so she could be passed a little shard of tech. A high-ranking technician's tool, meant to harvest information from defunct or unused terminals. Thank you, Lavender Pearl. Chocolate was lucky to have such good allies. She reminded herself to pass on Lavender's message to that Bismuth she liked at the soonest opportunity.

The other Diamonds' chambers were closed and locked, per protocol for their absence, but certain service gems-- cleaners, mostly-- were always allowed in to dust and to complete renovations. Chocolate knew that Blue had requisitioned a new mural to celebrate Pink Diamond's return, and it was rumored that Blue and Yellow's respective Pearls often pooled their information in order to more effectively do their jobs. True credits to their gem type, there. Chocolate allowed herself an indulgent smirk. That made her job _that much_ easier. 

Chocolate waited decoratively by Blue Diamond's chambers until some of the maintenance Peridots came by without their supervisor. The smaller Peridot slowed when she saw Chocolate Pearl, almost fumbling the toolbox in her hands. "It's a Pearl," she said incredulously. "What's it doing _here_?"

Her companion, a Peridot with star-shaped hair, held out a hand and said, "I'll deal with this. Pearl! Why are you here?" Chocolate met her eyes and raised an eyebrow, then glanced pointedly down at the Pink Diamond insignia on her dress. The Peridot faltered. "You're... working for Pink Diamond?" Chocolate nodded. "And you need to get into Blue Diamond's chambers?  _Why?_ "

The smaller Peridot scoffed, "Why are you bothering asking it? It's not like  _it'll_ know anything. It's probably just following orders."

"But why would anyone working for Pink Diamond need to get into Blue Diamond's quarters? That's against, like,  _every_ rule."

Chocolate said politely, "It's necessary that I enter these chambers in order to effectively complete my task." Just go along with it!

"But what if those orders are, like, to cause trouble or something?"

"Then we'll report it! It's not like it's our fault if some aristocrat uses her toys to mess with stuff."

"But what if she's not really working for Pink Diamond?" The star-haired Peridot squinted suspiciously. "She could've just been ordered to look like that. She could be a  _Crystal Gem!"_

"I still can't understand why you _believe_ in that old myth. And anyway, wouldn't the 'Crystal Gem's' renegade Pearl have eaten this one to absorb its power? _Think_ about it." The smaller Peridot tapped the side of her head. "Honestly, 5RQ, you're always too paranoid! Just _let it in_ ," the smaller Peridot urged. "What's it gonna do, sing at things? If we dawdle any longer our supervisor will have us shattered."

"Fine, I guess," the star-haired Peridot sighed. "But it's on your gem if she causes trouble." She opened the door and beckoned for Chocolate to follow her. "Come on in, then. Just don't get in the way or take anything."

Chocolate bowed, concealing a triumphant smile. "Thank you, my Peridot." She followed the two Peridots into Blue Diamond's chambers, where they detoured to the far end of the room to join the other maintenance gems. Then, feigning nonchalance, she walked over to a corner of the main room and pulled up a few screens. 

She was _expected_ to be able to glean some information from the other two Pearls' logs. Her Diamond would have to take care of things while the other two were away, after all, and his tasks could hardly be completed if he had no idea what the other Diamonds had actually been doing. Chocolate had no way to reach White Diamond's files, but Blue's and Yellow's would be easy enough. She tapped a few commands and rerouted the paperwork routes to go to her as well as Yellow and Blue Pearl, and then, glancing back to make sure no one was watching, she slipped the tool out of her skirt and into her palm and pressed it to the screen.

New pop-ups appeared: a message history, old recordings, encrypted files... If Chocolate was caught with all this she'd be harvested. If any gem besides Blue and Yellow Pearl was caught with all this they'd be harvested! Good thing she was smarter than that.

  _Download? Y/N._

_Y._

"What are you doing?" someone asked from behind her shoulder. Chocolate _eeped_ and whirled around, hiding the screen with her body.  _Downloaded 20%._

"My Peridot!" She bowed. "I'm...merely rerouting information from Blue Pearl to myself. Pink Diamond's orders." He  _had_ asked her to do the paperwork. And so much of it wasn't even reaching him, with gems outside Homeworld not knowing about the Diamonds' 'extended trip.'

_41%._

The star-haired Peridot frowned. "So, like... you're stealing information from the Diamonds? _Inter-Diamond power games?"_

 _""_ I'm doing. My job," Chocolate gritted out. "My Peridot."

"No..." trailed the Peridot. "I don't  _believe_ that! Why couldn't Blue Diamond have this information routed straight to her? There's no reason it couldn't reach her just because she's off-planet!" She pointed her limb enhancer at Chocolate. "You're lying to me," she said excitedly. "You're... an  _infiltrator!_ 5RW will have to believe me this time! It all makes sense!"

_77%._

Stars, she was an idiot. _Why_  oh _why_ couldn't she have come up with a better story? This was the kind of preparation Lavender Pearl always scolded her about...

No. No! She could salvage this! 

_88%._

Chocolate pressed a finger to her lips. "Not so loud! You're smart, Peridot, but you don't have _everything_ right. If you aren't careful you could ruin the whole plan before it starts to get fun! And believe me, _nobody_ wants that." 

The Peridot put her arm down, grin fading. Her expression sharpened with obsessive interest. "What... do you mean?"

Chocolate said, "I mean... that you're right. This  _is_ a kind of game. But it's not what you think." She leaned in and asked conspiratorially, "Tell me, Peridot, how do you think a Diamond learns to lead?"

The Peridot glanced nervously back at her supervisor and said softly, "By... watching other Diamonds?"

"Not quite." Chocolate let her lips curl into a smirk. "The Diamonds have a game they like to play with each other. Now that Pink Diamond's back and learning again, she's got to find a way back in. You're smart, Peridot. What kind of game do you think it is?"

"A  _spying_ game!" the star-haired Peridot hissed excitedly. "Yes! I knew it! They-- they send their servants to play power games for them, don't they, and then do a point system based on who gets what information and how, and-- and-- they wager colonies! And that's how Pink Diamond won Earth! She was finally learning to lead properly!" She gazed up at Chocolate avidly, like she was looking for confirmation of her theory.

Wow. Chocolate  _really_ hadn't expected the Peridot to come up with the entire lie for her. She nodded. "You've got the gist of it. Now, as Pink Diamond's current Pearl, it's my  duty to help her win another colony..."

 _100%._ Oh, thank the stars.

The Peridot nodded. "Yeah! Yeah, I get it!" She smacked her on the back, and Chocolate had to fight not to tumble over. "I won't keep you! Just, haha..." She leaned in, grinning wildly. "Keep fighting the good fight against the _secret mammalian underground_ , yeah?"

 _Snerk_. What?"You got it," Chocolate said seriously. "But I've got to go now. My Diamond needs her points, after all. Could you make sure no one sees me leave?"

"Sure thing!" The Peridot ran back over to her group, then turned back to wave with a bright grin and kicked a corner of the mural, which crumbled. Chocolate slipped out of the chambers amid the designer gems' shouts of frustration at the _totally random_  occurrence and the Peridots' rapid technical chatter.

She couldn't understand how that had actually worked. Just her luck, finding the one Peridot who was perfectly willing to aid suspicious activity as long as it kept things weird. There couldn't be any other beings in the universe with such crazy theories!  _Secret mammalian underground,_ ha. What was next, snake people?

Maybe she should keep in contact with that Peridot. She could always use more allies, and it was rare enough to even meet a gem that talked to Pearls like they were people. Like a Bismuth, Chocolate always kept a few irons in the fire.

She walked quickly and quietly back through the service hallways, thinking on the encounter and giggling to herself. 

Later, she'd realize that if she hadn't been so distracted she would have been able to avoid her old mistress. Instead, though, she walked straight into her.

Chocolate fell to the ground from the impact and stared up at whoever she'd run into with wide eyes. Not again! And here she thought she'd finally gotten more graceful... Oh. Oh,  _no._ She sprang up to her feet and bowed low. "My Agate! My most sincere apologies!"

Patuxent River Agate, red and yellow armor gleaming, narrowed her eyes. Her smile was anything but kind. "Now, Pearl, there's no need to be so  _polite_ all of a sudden. After all, it's too late to redeem yourself to me. If  _I_ ever have to deal with you again, it will be as a tool.  _Not_ as any sort of gem." She looked down her nose at her former Pearl. "It's only been a day and I'm already glad to be rid of you. Have you been showing the same insubordination to Pink Diamond as well?"

"My Agate--" Chocolate stammered. The only other gems in the hallway, a pair of Rubies, went around the corner and out of sight. One of them gave Chocolate one last curious glance. No help there. Anyone could do anything to a Pearl, if their mistress wasn't kind enough to protect them. Chocolate hadn't earned Pink Diamond's regard _yet_.

" _Don't_ interrupt me." The Pearl closed her mouth. "I can't believe I was patient with you for so long.  _Honestly._ A Pearl like you! You don't even match my color." Patuxent River looked around the empty hallway, then laughed. "It's actually fortunate that I ran into you. You know, you and your new mistress deserve each other."

Chocolate froze. "My Agate... you're referring to Pink Diamond?" No. No, she wouldn't, even she wouldn't dare...

" _Pink Diamond_ ," Patuxent River sneered. She stepped closer, crowding Chocolate against the wall. "Like she's anything at all like Yellow Diamond, or even Blue. Pink Diamond died on Earth! Everyone knows that. There was a  _war_ over it. Yellow Diamond would never make that kind of mistake, not even recognizing her own kind in some sort of _different form_. No. Whatever this organic impostor did to implant some piece of Pink Diamond in itself that managed to fool Blue Diamond... well. She's been mourning for so long, it's not surprising that she's lost her reason. But no responsible gem would let this farce continue. Not when the sanctity of our way of life is on the line." She clenched a fist. "However this organic has managed to cut contact with the Diamonds... it can't last. And when they return..."

"It's not a farce," Chocolate forced out. "It's-- he really is Pink Diamond, I saw--" Patuxent River raised a hand, and Chocolate flinched back, squeezing her eyes shut. Stupid, stupid, why hadn't she watched where she was going, how widespread were these views-- "I-I--"

" _He,"_ the Agate sneered. "He? I see you've fallen for it, too. Not that I could expect much else from a Pearl, I suppose. You're programmed for loyalty. It's just a shame that you'd have to imprint on someone with such a  _tenuous_ claim to power." She checked a screen. "Hmm. Now you've made me late for a meeting. Such a  _clumsy_ Pearl." Patuxent River stepped back and sighed. "Ah, well. Soon enough I'll be in possession of a better one. As a  _reward_ for rooting out such a plot from right under Yellow Diamond's eyes."

Chocolate said softly, voice shaking, "I could tell Pink Diamond about this whole conversation, you know. I could tell him right now. How long do you think you'd last, without Yellow Diamond's protection? Do you think Yellow would choose  _you_ over her own family? Who would she believe?"

"That's right," Agate replied, just as soft. "Who  _would_ be believed? The loyal Agate who reported the Diamonds' disappearance and who did everything she could to keep their empire together? Or a defective Pearl, only out for herself, with a history of unruliness and disobedience? What did your last owner say? That Sapphire? That she foresaw your ruining her plans. That she foresaw your _eavesdropping,_ your _meddling,_ your sentimentality... your  _rebellion._ I don't think even Pink Diamond would tolerate a Pearl who goes against orders and refuses to  _know her place._ No one in such a precarious position could afford it." She reached out and tweaked Chocolate's nose. " _You_ couldn't afford it."

Chocolate clenched her fists. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked furiously. Don't cry, don't cry... "I'm just a defective Pearl, like you said. Why are you even talking to me?"

"Because," her Agate said, contemptuous, "you're in the perfect position to be a _spy_." Chocolate recoiled. "Don't move. Listen to me. You're going to tell me everything this  _Pink Diamond_ does. You're going to forward me her important documents. You're going to do  _everything_ I say, or I'll tell your new mistress everything I know about you. And oh, little Pearl..." Patuxent River sneered. "Every one of your transgressions, by itself, could be enough to have you branded a traitor and a danger to the Empire. All together... well. Not even a Diamond could save you then." 

The Agate shoved Chocolate back against the wall, hard enough to jar her shoulder and make her cry out. "I'll be expecting your first transmission tonight," Patuxent River said above her. "For once in your existence, you had better be punctual."

Chocolate kept her eyes down until she heard the Agate leave the hallway. Then, shaking with fear and helpless rage, she stood up and made her way back to Pink Diamond's chambers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I saw "Legs From Here To Homeworld" and I loved it! But I've had this idea for a long time already, so I'm just gonna say: this is an AU in regards to White Diamond and basically everything about her, and whatever's keeping her on Homeworld or whatever just isn't the case in this story. This will be explained in-fic. So the tags hold up: this follows canon up to "Reunion," and nothing past that will have much bearing on how this fanfic's written. Also anything about Pearl possibly previously belonging to White won't really come up, either. Oh, well-- these are the perils of writing something while the show's still running.
> 
> Also, Patuxent River Agate is a red and yellow agate found in Maryland (source: Wikipedia).


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven oversees a trial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one thing: "Perinaldo" is the best name I've ever heard, and I really want to find a way to use it in the story somehow. Anyway, thanks for all the kudos and comments!

 

 Steven floated up to the giant throne and landed carefully near the rim. He looked back over the side at Amethyst and two of the Famethyst Jaspers, standing next to Chocolate Pearl way down below. "Don't you think this is kinda high up?" he shouted down at them.

Amethyst shrugged and shouted back, "Chocolate says if you just beam in it might not be as intimidating!" She jumped up and landed beside him. "And besides, this way you'll be all shrouded in shadows and stuff. That's supposed to be, like,  _super_ tyrannical."

"Aw, I don't wanna be  _tyrannical,_ " Steven said. He kicked at the ground. "I gotta be honest, Amethyst, all this Diamond stuff is really getting to me." 

It had been two and a half weeks since Blue and Yellow Diamond had disappeared, and since White Diamond had apparently done the same. Gems had started to wonder what was going on-- and Steven had become the subject of new scrutiny. Clearly the Diamonds intended for Pink Diamond to rule in their stead for a while, the thought went, so they should treat Pink Diamond like they would any other, so she could continue learning to lead. Steven kind of wished they'd just work things out among themselves for once. 

"What, you mean that Emerald who was all, 'gimme a new ship,' or that Sapphire who kept going on about organics on the colonies?" Amethyst blew a raspberry. "Like, yeah, we know about organics, we're _from Earth_. They aren't new, y'know? But she kept babbling about it! You saw the broadcast, it lasted for like an hour. Bo-ring."

"I dunno, I felt kinda bad about that. She was really worried about it. I wish we could've calmed her down some more."

"Why bother?" Amethyst asked airily. "Some gems are just  _formed_ hysterical." She leaned over the side of the giant throne and waved down at the two Amethyst guards at the base. They waved back. "Whoa, this is huge! This is where you were for your trial, huh. Weird lighting."

"Well, I wasn't on the throne," Steven said awkwardly. He pointed down at a bright triangle on the floor. "I was there, where it's glowing." Well, he thought. The whole thing had been a bit of a blur. "They gave me a lawyer and everything-- she actually ended up saying Pink Diamond's death didn't make sense when you thought about it." Steven frowned. "I... don't know what happened to her, after that. She got poofed after she accused the Diamonds of organizing Pink's shattering."

"Haha, homegirl's got some guts!" Amethyst chortled. "Hope they didn't shatter her." Her face fell, then perked up. "Hey, maybe she'll be defending this gem, too."

Steven gazed around the minimalistic courtroom-- at the geometric decorations and the bizarre lighting-- and wished he was back on Earth again, without having to worry about going back to Homeworld as soon as possible so no one noticed him missing. Homeworld was so uninviting: so distantly, uncaringly beautiful. There were no plants, no butterflies, no ocean waves... no donut shops or fry bits. No Connie, either. She'd be too obvious a visitor, since she wasn't even a gem. "Yeah, maybe."

Still. She'd be fascinated by all this. Steven would have to bring a camera next time. "Who's the gem on trial again?"

"No idea!" Amethyst paused. "Hold on, I'mma go ask." She hopped down to the ground, talked to Chocolate Pearl for a few seconds, glanced at a screen Chocolate pulled up, and jumped back up. "Some Morganite, on trial for treason and not paying enough attention to paperwork or something. Heck if _I_ know."

Steven hoped they'd at least tell him what the defendant was accused of during the trial itself. From what he remembered of his, it had been kind of rushed. The defense hadn't even been allowed to call a witness! He'd watched a few episodes of Law and Order, when he'd gotten back through Lars' head, and he was pretty sure that hadn't been all that fair. 

Of course, neither was summary execution as basically the only option other than "innocent" for anyone accused of a crime big enough to actually put them in front of the Diamonds, so maybe he shouldn't have been analyzing it too deeply. 

A faint hum announced the start of the trial, and a pinkish-tan gem appeared suddenly in the triangle, right next to a yellow Zircon. This lawyer didn't look the same as the one Steven had met. Darn. Amethyst hissed, "It's starting!" just as the blue Zircon (also not the same one from Steven's trial) appeared on the courtroom floor. 

Chocolate Pearl stepped forward and said in a loud, clear voice, "May I announce the illustrious _Pink Diamond_." She bowed in the direction of the throne. The Morganite saluted immediately; the two Zircons spent a moment staring in astonishment at the throne-- Steven wasn't actually sure if they could really see him all that well-- before doing the same. He adjusted his shirt around his gem self-consciously. Amethyst had suggested that he crop his shirt higher to show off his diamond, so he'd done it, but now his belly felt cold. Sometimes he regretted being half-human. 

The prosecuting Zircon-- this time the blue one-- cleared her throat. "My shimmering Diamond," she said officiously. "The defendant, Morganite Facet 2 Cut 3SG, stands accused of high treason, aiding and abetting a fusion, administrative negligence, setting a bad example to gems of lower classes, fomenting rebellion, defying a direct order by a superior gem, sending a sarcastic message to a superior gem, and calling a superior gem an 'anti-innovation, close-minded pebble'."

"Oh, no, how terrible," Amethyst muttered under her breath. Steven punched her arm.

The blue Zircon continued, "Aside from the first one, any one of these offenses, by itself, would be enough to call this Morganite's ability and attitude into question. However, together, and given the Morganite's attempt to help the, ah,  _fusion_ , escape... it was thought best by all involved that the matter be judged personally by the highest authorities in the Empire." She saluted again. And then, painting every gem involved in what Steven suspected wasn't the fairest light, she started to explain the situation.

The Morganite had been in charge of developing the same colony for three thousand years. Before that, she had successfully completed the implementation of terraforming and Kindergarten creation procedures in three major colonies. She had risen to a higher rank than most Morganites through a mix of cunning, networking, and sheer competence. And then, assigned to a brand new colony after the Hessonite administrating it had been shattered for incompetence, she had taken over and brought the colony to peak efficiency.

And, apparently, the manner in which she'd done this had led quite naturally (said the prosecution) to rebellion, to unnecessary sentimentality, and to treason.

The Morganite had taken over a group of terraformers and Kindergarten developers: Peridots, Lapis Lazulis, and various low-ranking gems meant for physical labor. The colony had been far behind schedule and horribly disorganized (the prosecution insisted that this was all, somehow, the Morganite's fault). And so the Morganite, when she caught a Lapis Lazuli and a Desert Glass fusing in secret, had decided not to shatter them but to put them to work. The resulting fusion had been used to do work that the other gems couldn't do alone, and had swiftly brought the colony back up to speed-- even working in the open, as a fusion, beside other gems. 

The prosecutor didn't bother to mention why the other gems hadn't ever reported the fusion. Instead, she moved right on to how a surprise inspection, and a disastrous equipment failure which had led to the two gems fusing to fix it, had exposed the treasonous nature of the operation. The Hessonite inspector had immediately reported the crime, but only after threatening the Morganite and offering to overlook the incident if the Morganite would do her a few favors regarding the colony and would get rid of the gems involved (the Zircon didn't seem to notice the contradiction in what she'd just said). It was at this point that the Morganite accrued her last few crimes.

"And then," the blue Zircon said, "the Morganite committed her most heinous crime yet: she dissipated the physical forms of multiple Quartz guards under the command of the Hessonite, broke into the prison block where the two deviants were kept, and attempted to help them escape their imprisonment. And when the Hessonite confronted her personally, with the assistance of twelve Quartz soldiers--"

Amethyst snorted, "Wow, that's real personal."

"-- the Morganite spat in her superior's face and said that if a gem could be shattered for doing her job to her best ability, then perhaps it was not that gem but the _law itself_ that was wrong. This, to my mind, shows clear rebellious intent."

"Objection, my Diamond!" the yellow Zircon finally cut in, saluting quickly. "That last part is conjecture."

"Uh, sustained," Steven called out, and the yellow Zircon sent her opponent a triumphant look. The blue Zircon glared right back.

"My Diamond," she said, "I would like to call Hessonite Facet 8 Cut 6YJ as a witness."

A platform rose up to the side of the throne, with a dark blonde woman dressed in flowing red standing in its spotlight. Her hair was pulled into two buns on the sides of her head, and her lips were pulled into a cruel smile. "My Diamond," she said smoothly, crossing her arms over the gem in her chest, "I saw this Morganite rebel with my own eyes. I've known her for over a thousand years, and in that time only regarded her as a gem unfortunately tied to her work, which led her to have... egalitarian... tendencies. However, when she spat in my face, caught red-handed in a treasonous act, and cursed the names of the Diamonds," the Hessonite said with relish, "I can't say I was surprised. I suspect that Morganite has been aiding and abetting defective gems for almost her entire existence-- keeping her treason hidden beneath her supposed love of work." The Hessonite regarded the accused gem almost fondly. "If I had her morals... well. That would be the most reasonable course of action. Wouldn't it, my dear."

"Whoa, keep your personal issues out of this, dude," Amethyst said softly. Steven choked on a completely inappropriate giggle and elbowed Amethyst again. She had a point, though: this Hessonite seemed really weirdly into the whole thing. Like,  _really_ into it. He wasn't really sure she was a reliable witness. 

"If you would permit, my Diamond," the yellow Zircon said. "The defense would like to speak."

"Is that really necessary?" the Hessonite asked. She adjusted her hair. "After all, we all know that she did the crime. She'll even admit it, if asked. Won't you, dear?" Even from the throne, Steven saw the Morganite roll her eyes.

"Try to stay professional, won't you?" she called back. "Your behavior is unbecoming."

"Stay professional!" the Hessonite mocked. "Stay _professional!_ You always, _always_ say that!

"Well," said the Morganite, "perhaps I wouldn't say that if you actually knew how to do your job. How many colonies were you passed over for, again?"

"Would the defendant  _please_ be quiet--"

"Why not ask the witness to be quiet? She's the one running her mouth about things she can't begin to understand, like productivity."

"Oh, that is _it,_ you smug-- frigid--  _you!_ " The Hessonite started clambering over the witness stand.

"Oh, go on, keep going with your childish blabbering, like it ever changes anything--"

"I'm gonna  _shatter_ you this time, see if I don't!"

"You know what, Hessonite? I dare you to try!"

"Then I  _will!"_

"Good! I'll look _forward_ to it!"

"Okay, that's enough from the witness stand thank you and goodbye!" Steven said quickly, and the Hessonite was beamed away.

Amethyst, on her side laughing, said, " _Steven,_ you should'a let 'em kept talking, that was the most fun I've had in centuries!"

"Amethyst, I don't think now is the time," Steven hissed, a little strained. The two Zircons were just staring. Finally, the yellow one cleared her throat.

"Anyway," she stressed, "my Diamond. May the defense speak?" She looked defeated. Steven empathized; the prosecution's story, and the witness's, had matched up, after all, and then the defendant had gotten into a shouting match with the very superior she was accused of defying... For the defense, it didn't really look good. And it was pretty obvious that the Morganite was guilty.

It was just that  _guilty,_ under Homeworld law, didn't mean the same thing as  _wrong._ Hmmm.

"Actually," Steven said, thinking out his words before he said them, "I'd like to hear Morganite speak in her own defense." He barely stopped himself from adding "if that's alright with you." 

The Morganite's pedestal rose, and finally Steven could see her clearly. Her eyes widened; she could see  _him_ clearly, too. The Morganite stood ramrod-straight, salmon hair cut professionally short, in an orange-pink bodysuit clearly designed more for function than form. Her face was carefully neutral. She kind of reminded Steven of Dr. Maheswaran: collected, and stern, but fair-minded and kind underneath. She didn't look like someone who deserved to be executed for the crime of allowing a fusion to live.

"My Diamond," the Morganite said, saluting neatly. "I won't deny the allegations of defying a superior officer, or of allowing a fusion to live. You've... met... Hessonite, just now, and while of course you may disagree, I believe that her personal  _issues_ in regards to myself biased her, as they always bias her, when she assigned herself a surprise inspection of my colony-- a colony that had shown only vast improvement since it was put under my administration." Here her voice showed a hint of pride. "This improvement was due to Sea Glass-- er, the fusion, of a Lapis Lazuli and a Desert Glass. The combined power of the two gems allowed for rapid terraforming, which in turn allowed the Kindergarten technicians to go to work on the areas much more quickly than they would have otherwise. And the colony has been nothing but a boon to the Empire." She paused. "If-- if I may be so bold as to say so, my Diamond."

The prosecution said, "But this fusion was allowed to remain fused outside of work, for sentimental reasons. Do you deny that claim?"

The Morganite pinched her lips. "No, I do not. Their remaining fused allowed them to work better as a fusion during the times they were needed."

"And do you deny that the fusion was allowed to consort with regular gems, even going by its own name of Sea Glass?"

Her fists clenched. "I do not."

"And do you deny that, since fusions outside of combat, especially between different types of gems, are expressly forbidden under Diamond law, your success at the colony was only achieved through dishonest and flagrantly illegal means?"

The Morganite stiffened. "No," she said furiously, "I don't deny that. I also don't think it matters."

She turned to face Steven. "My Diamond, I was tasked with salvaging a colony so horrifically mismanaged that nearly half of its gem staff had been shattered due to so-called incompetence or disobedience. They were the scapegoats for the decisions of a megalomaniacal, short-sighted fool. They were afraid to innovate, afraid to take initiative, afraid to speak. And the farther behind their colony fell, the more their supervisor blamed them. Her demotion, and my subsequent reassignment, was a last-ditch effort to save the colony from failure. And it is my understanding, my Diamond, that desperate times call for desperate measures.

"Lapis and Desert Glass, fused, could do the work of ten gems. They pulled the colony from the bottom ranks to nearly the top. They allowed for the development of the Kindergarten, which created many of the younger aristocrats of the Diamonds' courts, especially Sapphires. Their presence improved overall morale, allowing for a one hundred percent increase in efficiency. And yes, I _did_ calculate that. Their fusion was not treasonous, was not a sign of fomenting rebellion, and--" She faltered. "And she doesn't deserve to be called an abomination. They only continued to fuse under my orders, for the advancement of the colony under my administration. They don't deserve to be punished for my actions-- neither of them does." The blue Zircon scoffed.

"My Diamond," the Morganite said, saluting again. "If either of those gems is still unharvested... I beg you to show them mercy. They did what they did for the good of the Empire, under the orders of a superior gem. I take full responsibility for their actions as well as my own." Steven was close enough to see that her hands were shaking. "And... I will accept any punishment you see fit to give me."

Steven froze; behind him, he felt Amethyst do the same. With all his heart, he wanted to insist that the Morganite had done nothing wrong, that fusions weren't an abomination, that the Diamonds' laws were unjust and that he sympathized. That he felt the same way. Seeing this proud administrator trying so hard to be brave in front of him for the sake of her subordinates, acting like he had when he'd given himself up as Rose Quartz... it made his chest ache. He wanted to cry.

But a Diamond, unless she was blue and also a giant woman, couldn't be seen to cry.

"I'm gonna declare a brief recess," Steven announced in lieu of responding, drawing on all his memories of lawyer-themed TV shows, even the Crying Breakfast Buddies litigation special. "The defendant is to be returned to her cell, and the two gems who fused, if they haven't been shattered or harvested yet, are to be left alone. The trial will resume... when I say it will. That will be all."

The courtroom emptied itself of everyone but Steven's guards, Chocolate Pearl, and Amethyst. Steven floated down off the throne, and Amethyst followed him down. His retinue was wide-eyed.

"That was  _intense,"_ said one of his guards. "I've never seen a trial before!"

"Yeah, that got kinda heavy in the end."

"My Diamond," Chocolate rushed in, saluting quickly. Steven winced; she still insisted on calling him that, even in private. He hadn't pushed it, though. Maybe it was just the way she was. "If you'll take a suggestion...?" she asked timidly. Steven nodded. "Zircons are very active in the courts of their respective gems. They'll certainly gossip about the outcome of the trial. Whatever decision you make here, if you come down too strong on one side or the other, you will make enemies. And at the moment... I am not certain that some of those enemies are wise to make."

"What, like they're gonna go against a Diamond?" the other guard asked. "But he's got the gem and everything!"

Chocolate gave her a scornful look. "And if they decide to discredit him and say he isn't actually Pink Diamond, my Quartz? If they decide they'll be doing their own Diamonds a favor by deposing him? Their own sovereigns aren't here to regulate them. Anything that makes Pink Diamond lose his base of support risks his losing the whole of Homeworld to anarchy." She noticed Steven listening to her and flushed. "My Diamond."

"You really know a lot about this," Steven admired. He was almost jealous. Chocolate bowed her head in acknowledgement. "So let me get this straight... if I just pardon her, I'll seem like I'm flouting Diamond law, and if I pardon Sea Glass that's even worse. But I can't execute her, because she was working in the interests of Homeworld and doing really well with her colony, and also that would be wrong since she was just being nice and doing her job. And for one reason or another, any option's gonna make enemies."

"... Precisely, my Diamond."

"Huh." Steven thought for a minute. "So I guess I gotta think of a compromise. I guess it can't be any worse than that whole Restaurant Wars thing."

"Uh, Steven, I don't think gourmet meals are gonna fix this one," Amethyst pointed out.

Steven shook his head. "No," he said, "but listening might. I think... I'm gonna get them to bring in Sea Glass herself."

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get a little heavy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thanks for all the kudos and comments-- they really mean a lot to me.

 A Lapis Lazuli and a Desert Glass, about to be shattered for illegal fusion. Steven had an idea he'd met them already.

He'd gone back through the service hallways, after his visit to Earth, and had found the cells empty. When he'd asked where the prisoners had been taken, he'd just been told they were being held elsewhere until "the trial" was complete. He'd  _worried_ over them. 

Steven was glad they weren't dead, but he kind of wished he'd broken them out when he had the chance. It would be a lot harder to help them now, with every aristocrat on Homeworld scrutinizing his every move. 

"This is gonna be weird, isn't it," he said faintly. 

"Why?" Amethyst asked, waving her feet over the edge of the giant seat. "You're being nice to them, by Homeworld standards. What're you even gonna ask, though?"

"I'm not sure," Steven admitted. "But I want them to speak out for themselves. I think... most gems don't know anything about fusion except what they're told. Maybe if they hear a different viewpoint, they'll see things differently." He let himself be optimistic. "And even if nothing changes, if I know where they are, and if I can keep them from being shattered... maybe we could still save them?"

The two of them were back on top of the throne, with Chocolate Pearl and the Quartz guards down below. Steven didn't think any of them could hear him speaking.

Amethyst frowned. "What, like we could hide them somewhere?" Steven shrugged.

"I don't know. I guess I'm still thinking about it."

Amethyst punched him lightly in the arm. "Hey, don't worry about it. You're a Diamond now, aren't you? You can just be like, do what I say, and as long as it _seems_  all evil and stuff no one's gonna object. You can still be  _Steven._ You just have to be all, y'know, stealthy about it. Like a spy."

Steven perked up a little. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Thanks, Amethyst." He paused, suddenly confused. "Wait, do you think I just  _say_ 'end the recess'? How do I--"

The triangle at the center of the courtroom lit up again, and seven gems beamed into the room: the two Zircons, the Morganite, two Jasper guards, and the two  _other_ accused. Each one had her arms held by one of the Jaspers. "Huh. That works."

He heard the Lapis Lazuli exclaim, "My Morganite! You're okay?" and saw her wince as the Jasper tightened her hold. He couldn't tell too well from where he sat, but he thought it might have been the same one who'd been taunting them in the cells. Steven's fists clenched.

The blue Zircon saluted and announced, "My illustrious Diamond! The fusion, as requested."

Steven barely heard the defense mutter, "Seriously? They aren't fused _now,"_ but he did see the blue Zircon elbow her in the side. Great. This would be fun. _  
_

The defense said louder, half to Steven and half, he thought, to the two prisoners, "Pink Diamond has mercifully asked that the two gems accused of illegal fusion be allowed to represent themselves in trial." 

The Desert Glass stared at the Zircon in clear shock, while the Lapis Lazuli glared back at her guard. "Wait," Desert Glass said, "we're actually being given a trial? Or we're witnesses in our Morganite's? 'Cause I won't say anything against her!"

"Couldn't just _saying_ that be used as evidence against her?" the Lapis wondered. She paled. "Wait, um, forget I said that--"

The Morganite saluted. "My Diamond, as you can see, they aren't malicious at all. They were only following my orders when they fused."

The blue Zircon sniped, "I believe my Diamond asked that they speak in their  _own_ defense?"

"Oh, um, yeah, hey, I think I might even have, um, a speech--" The Lapis cleared her throat, and her friend hastily covered her mouth.

"I'll speak for us!" she blurted out. "Uh, if you don't mind, my Diamond." 

The podium rose up, carrying Desert Glass high above the rest of the gems. Her pale, jagged hair hid her gem eye, but Steven could see her other eye go wide and then scared. Oh. Right. Her friend (girlfriend? He didn't want to assume) had tried to get him to help them escape. She probably thought that had been a test or something-- one that they'd failed. Steven gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

Desert Glass blinked, looking thrown, then seemed to gather her wits. "My Diamond," she asked slowly, "what did you want to know? I can't imagine our Morganite didn't already tell you the basics..."

"I... just want to know your side of the story," Steven said. "Your Morganite said you were fusing under orders, so you could fix the colony faster, and that sometimes you stayed fused even when you weren't working. I want to know about that. I-I want to know how everything happened. Okay?"

"Okay...?" she echoed. She corrected herself. "I mean, of course, my Diamond!" Steven was getting really sick of that title. It always felt less like respect and a lot more like fear. Desert Glass squared her shoulders. "When Lapis and I first fused, it was an accident..."

... and the second time they ever fused-- the first time it had been on purpose-- they had realized how much stronger they were together, and had come up with a plan.

Their old supervisor had been, Desert Glass said, vicious and lazy, made more vicious by her awareness of her own shortcomings and her growing list of reprimands from superiors. She'd shattered gems for not following her orders, when the orders had been nonsensical; she'd shattered them for taking initiative, too, even when their actions had helped them reach their goals. At the time, she'd been threatening the terraformers with severe punishment if they didn't complete their objectives in half their allotted time. It had been an impossible goal. So, Desert Glass said, she and Lapis had decided on an impossible solution.

Sea Glass could erect whole buildings in a matter of minutes. Sea Glass could raise the ocean, and could lift weights neither of them could move on their own, and could be quiet, so quiet, when she had to be... and so, when it was dark and other gems were doing other duties, they had sped things up a bit, when they could. Using the cover of storms, of solar flares, of severe winds, (and, Steven suspected, of other gems who knew what they were doing and wanted to help), they had helped their teams complete their objectives and stay alive. They hadn't been caught until Morganite was assigned the colony, and then only because she'd been shrewd enough to question how a small group of terraformers could manage such immense changes overnight.

But their Morganite had let them keep fusing, because they were useful, and she'd even directed them so they'd be more effective. Their Morganite had done her duty. 

Their Morganite, Steven noticed, looked almost furious right now, and for a long moment he couldn't figure out why. Then the prosecution spoke.

"So what you're telling us," the blue Zircon said slowly, "is that you fused of your own volition for a long time before you were given official orders to do so, and that your Morganite was aware of this before setting foot in this courtroom." Sudden tension fell over the courtroom. Oh. So _that_ was why. "Which would mean that your Morganite lied to a Diamond's face. Wouldn't it."

Desert Glass went pale. "I-I--" The platform lowered her back down, and the guard restrained her again. Steven winced.

The defense cut in. "I would hardly call it  _lying._ The Morganite merely meant that they _continued_  to fuse under her orders--"

"But not  _because_ of her orders. She implied-- nay, outright  _stated_ \-- that they only fused under her orders. This would mean that she was aware of an illegal fusion for some time and then, instead of having them harvested, she  _legitimized_ them. Thereby showing the other gems under her command that their own covert use of  _weapons of war_ was perfectly fine, so long as they weren't caught-- at least, not by anyone other than their Morganite. Tell me, Lapis Lazuli, were there any other fusions under your Morganite's command?"

The Lapis said hastily, "No! There weren't, I swear!" 

"That is irrelevant to this case, my Diamond!" the defense blurted out. "This is about allowing _these_ two gems to fuse--"

"No, actually," the prosecution crowed, "it's not. It's about this Morganite's treason. And there is a  _very_ large difference, under our laws, between allowing an illegal act for the sake of a colony and allowing it for the sake of legitimizing it for other gems. Can she prove, my Diamond, that she allowed them to remain unshattered purely for the sake of the colony? That her first thought was productivity? Or is it more likely that her first thought was that she  _sympathized,_ that our Empire's own laws are somehow  _incorrect,_ as she herself told her Hessonite, that she herself saw the fusion not as a tool or a weapon but as a person? That she thought she knew better than the Diamonds how this Empire should be run? That doesn't sound like the act of a conscientious administrator to me, my Diamond. That sounds like the act of a rebel sympathizer-- perhaps even a rebel herself. After all, the only other gems who ever allowed such abominations as _fusions_ to live so brazenly... were the Crystal Gems. And we all know what happened to  _them._ " The blue Zircon caught herself. "Apologies for their mention, my Diamond."

"Wait," Amethyst hissed, "you mean they don't actually know who you are?" Steven shushed her.

"My Diamond, this is blatant speculation!" the yellow Zircon said desperately. "It has absolutely no bearing on the case at hand."

Even from his place on the throne, Steven saw the Morganite's reaction: her clenched fists, her thinned lips, the sudden resolve in her shoulders. He knew the signs of a sacrifice-- from Peridot, giving herself up to the Rubies when she thought they would kill her, and from himself, up on that platform, when he called himself Rose Quartz and prepared to be executed for her crimes. He knew the look of someone who thought they weren't going to make it out alive. He felt queasy.

"That's right," the Morganite declared, and Steven _knew,_ he  _knew_ it was a lie, he knew she was only saying it to try to save her gems and he _couldn't do anything_ , not yet-- "I was already thousands of years old, when the rebellion happened on Earth. I knew gems who joined Rose Quartz-- who rejoiced at the thought of living free from the Empire. If I could have, I would have joined them. And when I caught these two gems fusing for the good of their colony, I manipulated them into doing it more. They thought nothing of following a superior gem's orders. They were  _loyal._ And I, a _rebel_ , took advantage of that."

"What?" Desert Glass shrilled. "No, you didn't-- she didn't! She's not a rebel, she just-- let go of me!" She struggled against her captor's hold. The Lapis twisted and kicked her Jasper in the side.

Her Morganite raised her voice over her gems' objections. "And they're still loyal, even now-- they still think I couldn't have duped them! But I'll tell you, my Diamond--  _Pink Diamond._ I supported-- I, I  _cheered on_ the Crystal Gems from the beginning! I was--" Steven saw her grimace, just a little--  "happy, when the Gems left Earth alone! And I _rejoiced_ when I heard you'd been shattered!"

The two Zircons froze; there was a moment of shocked silence, and then the Jasper holding the Lapis shoved her away and drew her weapon. "Shut your traitorous mouth!" She lunged, but the Morganite didn't move. Steven tensed, prepared to jump down--

And the Jasper jerked back and rose upward, lifted by a straining Lapis Lazuli. Desert Glass twisted out of her guard's grip and ran closer to the Morganite, hands clenched into fists. Her eyes were wet. "Leave her alone! You-- she's loyal, she's _been loyal,_ she's done good work for centuries-- one mistake and you want to execute her! You  _always_ do, that's what  _always_ happens-- you know how many gems I've seen die for being  _defective?_ If that's Diamond's law-- I wouldn't blame her for being a rebel! I would be a rebel! This is-- you're  _terrible!_ "

Steven's guards formed up, moving closer to the throne; Chocolate hid around the side. The Jasper broke loose from the Lapis's hold and grabbed her wrist, threw her to the ground  _hard--_ the other Jasper drew a mace and started advancing on Desert Glass. "So you do admit it," she growled. "Rebel  _scum."_

The Lapis Lazuli pushed herself to her feet and fluttered backwards, away from a wild punch from the Jasper. She flew up higher and landed next to Desert Glass, in front of their Morganite. Steven saw the Morganite murmur something to them; the two other gems looked back at her, almost sadly. Then they all took battle stances.

That was it. Steven stood up and started to move forward, but Amethyst pulled him back. "Remember what we said about not making enemies?" she asked. "If you go down there, you're gonna have to do a lot of fast talking."

"I've gotta help," Steven said urgently. "It's-- I can't just keep watching! They'll get shattered!" He tugged himself out of Amethyst's grip and moved forward--

The Lapis Lazuli and the Desert Glass clasped hands--

And a four-armed, sea green woman rose up from where they stood and roared. One of the Jaspers attacked her, and she backhanded her across the room. Her four eyes were narrowed with desperate rage. 

Steven was pulled back behind his guards as soon as he floated down to the ground, Amethyst landing heavily beside him. " _Steven_ , this is getting kind of out of hand!"

"We've gotta make them stop," Steven hissed. Sea Glass slammed the other guard into the ground, and the Morganite deftly disarmed her, swinging the mace experimentally with a grim look on her face. Making sure to go out fighting. Steven was getting  _really_ tired of people fighting.

"M-my Diamond," the blue Zircon babbled, "how do you plan to do that? Look at them, they've gone mad! And there are already other guards incoming!"

A full squadron of Jaspers beamed in and fanned out, circling the three fighters. They started attacking en masse; Morganite swept a Jasper's legs and poofed her in one swift maneuver, while Sea Glass turned and fended off more of the group. She summoned liquid wings and scattered Jaspers like marbles. More than a few of them poofed.

The Morganite danced closer to Sea Glass, using her mace to full effect, while the Jasper squadron reformed and mobbed the fusion all at once.

The Morganite fought some of them off, but eventually Sea Glass flagged under the assault-- one of the Jaspers came at her with a gem destabilizer-- she glowed and fell apart, two gems clattering to the ground, and the Jasper slammed down on the gems with the blunt end of her sword--

\--and the sword deflected off the surface of a shimmering pink shield. "That's  _enough!_ " Steven shouted. "Everyone,  _stop fighting!"_

The whole fight skittered to a halt. Steven dissipated his shield, standing over the two poofed gems, and turned to the Morganite, still holding her mace. "You too, Morganite," he said firmly. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

Morganite blinked, looking him over, then slowly placed the mace on the ground. "My Diamond," she said neutrally. She didn't salute.

One of the remaining Jaspers started, "My Diamond, our apologies for taking so long to subdue the prisoners--" Steven cut her off.

"That's fine." He clenched his fists. "This whole thing is stupid anyway." The room was shocked silent. Steven glared around at everyone. "I'm sick of this. I'm sick of  _fighting,_ I'm sick of trials, I'm sick of shattering--" He rounded on Morganite. "I'm sick of  _sacrifice!_ Look, I know you're not a rebel! I know Lapis Lazuli and Desert Glass aren't rebels! They're just a pair of gems who got caught fusing and who wanted to protect their supervisor. And  _you're_ just someone who wants to do right by her subordinates. They were fusing mostly to do work on a colony that needed to be done anyway, using their fusion as a tool, with your permission. This wouldn't even be a problem if someone with a grudge against you hadn't seen it. And then I wouldn't have to be sitting through a trial where it's obvious that  _no one's done anything wrong._

You know what? If as many gems are being shattered for being  _defective_ or for making mistakes as you say-- that  _is_ wrong! And it's  _stupid,_ too. If Homeworld's supposed to be low on resources, which is why you have to make gems with less powers, who are smaller, and then give them enhancements like Peridots-- you should have a use for  _every_ gem. You shouldn't be shattering anyone! If Blue and Yellow knew just how many gems die every day because their superiors decide they aren't worth keeping around-- if they saw how many lives you all just  _wasted--_ they'd be horrified. I know I am." Steven's voice cracked. "I'm not going to order these gems shattered. In fact, I'm going to order that they  _not_ be shattered. That  _no_ gems be shattered, anywhere, in the whole Empire. Not if there's any other option."

The Morganite was the only one brave enough to ask. "And... what other option would there be? My Diamond."

Steven looked down at the two poofed prisoners and scooped them into his hand. "You bubble them," he said. "Like this." A pink bubble appeared around the gems and floated in the air. "Every one of them. As a last resort  _only._ You give second chances, you get older gems to help them, you forgive mistakes, and if all else fails, if nothing else can possibly work, you bubble them. And you leave them in a room, in stasis, until you figure out what you did wrong. If you want a gem shattered, you have to give them a trial, and you have to come to the Diamonds. You have to come to me." He bit his lip and glanced toward Chocolate. "And this goes for every gem. Not just aristocrats, or technicians, or whatever. It even goes for Pearls. That's my verdict. These two will stay bubbled, in stasis, because... they're criminals, and there's nowhere else we could put them. And Morganite..." Steven paused.

"Your colonies are your pride and joy. They're everything to you. I can tell. But you broke a ton of the Empire's laws, and you admitted it, and you attacked your guards, so you have to be punished, too. So this is it: you can choose your replacement, for the colony you're currently living on, and even for the ones you still administrate from far away. But you're staying on Homeworld. And you're not gonna be able to go back." 

The Morganite stiffened and bowed her head. Steven hated himself. "As you wish, my Diamond." 

He forced himself to turn away. "That will be all," he said, and the courtroom emptied itself of everyone but his guards, Amethyst, and Chocolate Pearl. The bubble still floated just behind him.

Chocolate Pearl had tears on her face, Steven noticed, and somehow that made everything worse. "You're crying," he said stupidly. "Chocolate, are... are you okay?"

"My Diamond," she said, bowing as soon as she was addressed. "I am unharmed. Merely... frightened, by the fighting. My apologies. It won't happen again."

"It's fine," Steven said helplessly. "It's-- it's fine, really. I'm not gonna-- I won't, I won't-- hurt you, I'm not--" His voice broke. Amethyst rushed forward and dabbed at his face.

"Aw, Steven, you're crying," she said softly. "It's okay, dude, you did fine! No one even died, it's all cool, what's wrong?" She hugged him. "It's okay, they won't talk, you can tell me."

Steven hugged her back. "They thought I was gonna kill them," he said, perilously close to a sob. "They thought-- it's so  _stupid,_ no one even did anything wrong, they were all just trying to protect each other and they thought I was gonna  _kill_ them." Was this how his mom had felt? As Rose Quartz and Pink Diamond, hearing about how Bismuth wanted to shatter her to protect the Crystal Gems and the Earth, being the villain in her own story? How could he blame her? Two weeks of being a Diamond for real and he already wanted to run away. No wonder Blue and Yellow were so huge-- they carried an empire on their shoulders. They were tall enough to be above it all, not to care. 

Steven didn't think he'd ever be so blind.

He wanted his dad.

"C'mon, buddy," Amethyst soothed. One of the Famethysts patted Steven awkwardly on the back. "That was a really great speech you gave there. Think that counted as, like, an actual decree?"

Chocolate said softly, "It did; given Gem communication channels, it should take effect all over the Empire shortly. It will be a... rather large change."

"So much for not making enemies, huh," Steven said weakly. He pulled back and rubbed at his eyes. "You think gems'll start to hate me now?"

"I think," Chocolate mused, "that you're likely to have made a few allies, along with a few enemies. You  _did_ justify the decree with your mention of dwindling resources. That's been a worry for some time, my Diamond."

"Please don't call me that," Steven begged. "Not... not right now, okay?"

"Of course," the Pearl said. "I won't... _Steven_." 

Amethyst poked at the bubble. "What're you gonna do with these two?" 

Steven perked up a little. "I... was hoping you could take care of that, Amethyst. I think you'll know  _just_ what to do with them." Amethyst's bewildered look slowly morphed into understanding.

"Oh! Yeah, totally. Leave it to me." She hefted the bubble like a basketball. "Hey, if you're gonna get more involved in politics things... are you gonna have to build up an actual court?"

Steven thought about it. "Yeah. I think so." He remembered hundreds of pink bubbles, floating above Blue Diamond in the Zoo. A whole group punished for one gem's transgressions. He'd have to do something about them eventually, wouldn't he? "And I think I know just where to start."


	6. Chapter 6

 

"You're leaving things out," Patuxent River Agate growled. "You expect me to believe that part's true? That Pink Diamond broke down  _crying_ at the trial? Over a pair of _criminals_?" 

"It seemed, my Agate," Chocolate equivocated, "that h-- that she was crying from anger at the waste of resources." Well, no, actually, it hadn't seemed like that-- not to her. But maybe to the Zircons, who would have spread all sorts of rumors by now, it had looked like Pink Diamond's tears were motivated by frustration rather than sorrow. And anyway, it wasn't as though Diamonds never cried. According to rumor, at least, Blue Diamond never  _stopped_ crying. 

 _That_ must have been a drag at court.

"Waste of resources," the Agate mused. "Perhaps. And you said she spends all her time with an Amethyst guard? I didn't recognize that one."

Chocolate Pearl bowed her head. "She's Amethyst Facet 5 Cut 8XM, I believe. From the same Prime Kindergarten batch as the rest of the Amethyst guards. It... seems as though Pink Diamond may have taken a liking to her." He certainly _did_ like her, after all. Chocolate could never be accused of lying to her superiors. 

"Consorting with underlings," the Agate muttered. Chocolate kept her face carefully neutral. "So the rumors... that decree is _real_? It can't just be because of resource concerns... you idiot Pearl, you aren't telling me the whole story. What happened in that courtroom?"

"The two gems accused of fusing were ordered by Pink Diamond to appear in the courtroom and to speak for themselves. The Morganite on trial was caught in a lie because one of their stories contradicted hers. Then she claimed to be a rebel who had manipulated the two gems into fusing and had supported the rebellion on Earth, one of the prison guards attacked her, the two other gems fused and began to fight by her side, and when the Quartz soldiers failed to contain the situation Pink Diamond stepped in and yelled at everyone, then put the two previously fused gems in a bubble and sentenced them to stay that way for the foreseeable future, and sentenced the Morganite to remain on Homeworld and lose authority over her colony. She also made a decree that no gems are to be shattered anywhere in the Empire, but only bubbled. She said--" Chocolate faltered. "She said that included gems as low-ranking as even Pearls."

The Agate snarled and slammed a hand into the wall, pacing her chambers angrily; Chocolate flinched back from the movement. "Sentimental! No, worse--  _provoking._ Every no-account low-ranking menial worker in the Empire will think she can get away with anything now. No shattering, no harvesting, no making  _examples_ of... there's no better way to destroy the status quo. To _destabilize_. And I'll bet she knows it, too."

Chocolate Pearl stayed quiet and demure; she'd been privy to a  _lot_ of rants over the years. She was willing to bet that Patuxent River Agate had practically forgotten she was there.

The ranting Agate turned to her after a while. "And you! You've told me hardly anything _new_! Every single thing you've said so far I could have gotten from that simpering blue Zircon. So tell me, then: what's Pink Diamond done with that Morganite? What's Pink Diamond's connection to Earth? And how, exactly, did she survive, and why in such a changed form?" 

The Pearl tilted her head. "Would like me to answer in order of your asking, my Agate, or in order of what I actually know? Pink Diamond would hardly confide in a new Pearl."

Patuxent River Agate snarled, "Don't get smart with me. You've been listening in on her. I know it. That's a _habit_ of yours. So you're going to tell me what you know. Or  _I'm_ going to go to your new mistress with a full record of your defects. I'm getting very tired of protecting you, you know."

Chocolate didn't clench her fists, or narrow her eyes, or flinch back in fear. Instead, she merely blinked. And in the back of her mind, she let an idea start to take form. "Very well, my Agate. Then I'll tell you: while I was unable to listen in on Pink Diamond's meeting with the criminal Morganite--" mostly by virtue of making excuses and leaving the room immediately, because what she didn't hear couldn't be reported, now, could it-- "I am aware that Pink Diamond seems to wish to employ her in the formation of a new Court. Pink Diamond seems, also, to be very attached to her own colony Earth, and-- and to the beings that live on it." One of whom is a direct blood relative who gifted him an organic form, through some weird genetic mammal thing that leads to a familial bond-- not to mention the others who seemed to raise him and form him into an entirely new being with the powers and the gem of a Diamond...? "She doesn't seem to have many of her memories, but it seems as though she managed to survive despite--"  _because she was somehow familiar with--_ "the Crystal Gems. But..." And this was just plain a lie, at this point, though given what Chocolate had overheard Pink Diamond talking about with that unfamiliar Amethyst she wouldn't even be surprised if it were true, in some obscure way-- "she may have had to sacrifice her physical form, and some of her memories, to do it. In order to blend in with the organics on the planet, who... remained... after the Diamonds' decimation."

Except she didn't think the Diamonds  _had_ decimated the planet, because Pink Diamond spoke of organics and gems she knew on its surface. And if there were gems-- including Amethyst 8XM, who Chocolate knew for a fact hadn't been among the guards when they'd first arrived, she'd asked around and everything-- on Earth. then they were likely to be the Crystal Gems, or at least some remnants of it. And  _that_ would explain the bizarre, secretive trial that had happened earlier, with gems whispering about the return of the dreaded  _Rose Quartz_ and then her escape. 

It hadn't escaped Chocolate's notice that Pink Diamond's gem, with its strange orientation on his body, looked a lot like a pink Quartz.

She'd been listening a  _lot._

"And you're sure of all of this," the Agate asked intently. Chocolate Pearl nodded.

"Yes, my Agate. To the best of my knowledge, all of what I said is true." _And the rest of it is stuff I made up._

Patuxent River Agate squinted suspiciously, then nodded. "Then that will be all."

Chocolate curtsied, wavering a little, then left the room. She made it all the way down a deserted service hallway before she allowed herself to collapse from nerves. Just for a moment, she told herself, leaning against the wall. Just a moment, and then she'd be a picture-perfect Pearl once more, and she'd be graceful and dainty and delicate and  _not at all_ a spy who'd just lied to her former mistress. To her _face_. As long as no one was around to see, she could pretend she was a person instead of a fancy decoration.

Just a moment, just to let her new idea coalesce into a plan in her mind...

Another gem rounded the corner at a brisk, elegant pace, and Chocolate stood up in a hurry, posing like a Pearl should before letting her shoulders relax, just a little. The other Pearl blinked a greeting as she met Chocolate's eyes, and a sudden bolt of inspiration hit her. Chocolate blinked a greeting back, then started walking the opposite direction. 

Rumors, rumors, everything was always about rumors...

*

"Well, it wasn't Klavius 7, but it certainly was a challenge, organizing all this," Morganite mused. The convicted criminal had a screen up in front of her face and was looking at it intently. "Rose Quartz were a relatively rare gem type, my Diamond, but there are still thousands of them in those bubbles. I wouldn't suggest unbubbling them all at once." 

Pink Diamond's chambers were fuller than usual: four Amethyst guards (including one Crystal Gem), Chocolate Pearl, Morganite, Steven, and a solitary pink bubble, with an equally pink gem inside. Morganite surveyed the bubble and added, "I'm not sure I'd suggest unbubbling  _any_ of them here."

"We have to start somewhere," Steven said with a frown. "Don't we? And I thought if I met one of them alone first, maybe they wouldn't panic so much when they were all let out." 

Morganite asked, "And they won't remember anything past when they were poofed? It's not... they aren't awake, when they're just waiting in their gems?" She wasn't just asking about the Rose Quartz. He'd told her that Amethyst had snuck Desert Glass and Lapis Lazuli to Earth, where they could fuse in peace, but he could tell that she wasn't sure if she could believe him.

Steven smiled reassuringly. "They won't remember anything from while they were bubbled! It's just like going to sleep." 

"I... don't know what sleep is, actually, but if it's peaceful, I suppose that's all right." She looked at the bubble a little wistfully. "My Diamond, I must admit... it's a little strange, this decree you've given. The Empire is huge, and it relies mostly on its bureaucracy to function. Its administrators are used to using a large amount of, ah, personal discretion, when it comes to how they run their bases and colonies. Some, like my predecessor on Eta 11, have grown accustomed to being the sole authorities on their colonies-- essentially, punishing and shattering at will-- even when Diamond law would allow more clemency. Being forced to simply bubble unruly gems, even if it's a last resort, will make their excesses more obvious. Those bubbles  _will_ pile up, after all. And if imperial inspections come in after, say, a request for more workers, and see an auditorium full to bursting with bubbled gems..." Morganite actually laughed. " _That_ will be a sight." 

"Haha, yeah," Steven said a little awkwardly. "I... guess I didn't actually know how many gems got shattered here. I thought they were considered more important?"

Chocolate Pearl cleared her throat, flushing a little when Steven looked her way. "My Diamond... official policy states that no gem is to be shattered unless they're off-color or otherwise defective. The definition of 'defective,' however, is rather vague, and so higher-ranking gems may expand it to include whoever they wish. As long as their... interpretations... of the law do not significantly affect imperial business or resources, they may do as they wish. The welfare of individual, inferior gems is not considered."

Amethyst wrinkled her nose. "Dude, you don't even have a screen up. You just have that memorized?"

"Yes, my Quartz," Chocolate said stiffly. "It's a standard part of my batch of Pearls' programming." 

"Sorry, sheesh, don't get your hackles up about it." Amethyst turned toward Steven. "So are we doing this or not? 'Cause I kinda wanna meet an actual Rose Quartz. I bet they're pretty cool."

"Oh! Yeah!" Steven plucked the bubble out of the air. "Okay-- five, four--"

8XJ whispered to 8XH, "What's _'c_ _ool'?_ " The other Amethyst shrugged.

"Maybe it's an Earth disease."

"--one!" The bubble popped, and the pink gem clattered to the floor. Everyone stared at it expectantly.

"Maybe she's asleep?" Steven guessed after a long moment passed. Amethyst poked the Rose Quartz. "Uh, maybe don't do that right now, Amethyst."

"She could just be choosing a new outfit," Morganite suggested. The gem started to glow. "Ah, here she is."

The light flared out, then drew back into the shape of a broad-shouldered woman, about as tall as an Amethyst. She solidified into a light pink woman, darker pink hair cut in straight bangs across her forehead, with her gem on the inside of her left palm. Her jumpsuit had a light pink diamond in its center. 

The Rose Quartz stared up at the chamber's jeweled pink ceiling in awe, barely noting the gems around her. Then she blinked, glanced around, and said, with rising confidence, "Rose Quartz Facet 25 Cut 6OP reporting for duty, my Diamond!" She gave a crisp salute. 

Steven startled. "Wait, you can tell I'm Pink Diamond?"  _Garnet_ hadn't even been able to tell that. And the number of gems who'd been confused at his face on their screens had been so big he'd stopped counting. 

The Rose Quartz looked him over pensively, focusing especially on his gem. She reminded him of a jeweler, inspecting a diamond ring to see if it was real. "Yes, my Diamond? I mean, it's obvious. The cut's not right for a Quartz, and it's too clear-- not fogged up at all! And everyone's wearing Pink Diamond's insignia here but you, even though we're obviously in some place associated with her, and Morganites never get assigned  _four_ Quartz guards, at least not outside of a war zone..." She bit her lip. "Am I wrong? I'm extrapolating a lot here. I could be wrong. I don't think I am, though.

"You're right," Steven assured her. "It's just that usually gems think I should look different. Or they think Pink's-- think I'm dead."

6OP frowned. "But you're not dead. You're _literally_ right here. And obviously you're  _some_ kind of Diamond, you have the gem." 

"Wait, wait, wait. How can you just tell what kind of gem it is? It looks the same as yours!" Amethyst pointed to the Rose Quartz's palm. "Is it, like, a Rose Quartz thing--"

"It's a Rose Quartz thing," 6OP confirmed. "Well, mostly. We're programmed to be able to ID gem types. Most of us don't look that close." Her tone implied that she had no idea why that was.

Morganite cut in, sounding a little impatient. Oh, yeah, that had an actual script they were supposed to follow with this. Steven had forgotten. "Sorry to intrude, my Diamond, but Rose Quartz-- what do you recall from before this room?"

6OP shrugged. "I came out of the ground and they were separating Rose Quartz's from the other Quartz soldiers, so I went and stood with them. We hung around for about a day, then some Citrine guards and a couple of Agates came out and poofed us all. Then I woke up here. They were yelling something about a rebellion and Pink Diamond being dead. Clearly you  _aren't_ dead, though, so what happened to that rebellion? Did we win? 'Cause I can fight if you want me to." She raised her fists. "I was  _literally_ made for it."

Steven waved her off. "The rebellion's over! Don't-- don't worry about that. It's... actually... been about five thousand years since you were bubbled." Steven scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. "Sorry about that. I would've released you sooner, but I only came back as Pink Diamond like four months ago."

The Rose Quartz blinked. Then, slowly, she glanced around the room-- at the mural showing a completely different Pink Diamond on the wall, at Steven, and at the other gems. "My Diamond-- it took you  _five thousand years_ to regain your form? If that's true-- I'm sorry to tell you this, but I think you have a  _condition._ " She had the exact same tone as Connie's mom had when she'd properly seen the prototype clusters in the hospital-- horror, mixed with medical curiosity. "Have you had your gem looked at?"

Steven laughed. "Uh, I don't think that's gonna be necessary--"

"Are you implying that a Diamond could be defective?" Morganite asked lightly. Her eyes gleamed.

6OP paled. "N-no! Well--no? I mean, what does _defective_ mean really, does anyone actually know?"

Chocolate tilted her head, the faintest smile playing on her lips. "If you would like a definition, my Quartz, I would be glad to provide one."

"Guys, be nice," Steven chided. "It's okay if you'd rather heal than hurt people. You're a medic, that's your job! Are... are other Rose Quartz like that?"

"I wouldn't know," 6OP said blankly. "I emerged like a day ago."

"Oh. Yeah." Steven recalibrated. She'd just mentioned that. "Well, we're gonna be reintegrating Rose Quartz in with other gems anyway, so I guess we could just ask one of them." He held out a hand. "But it's nice to meet you, Rose Quartz."

6OP stared at his hand. Then, slowly, she took it, held it for a second, and let go. Steven smiled awkwardly. Oops. He'd forgotten gems didn't know what handshakes were.

"My Diamond..." the Rose Quartz started, "do you not like Rose Quartz? You just winced."

"No!" Steven blurted out. "Well, I mean, my mom was a Rose Quartz, or we thought she was, and then it turned out she was Pink Diamond-- I dunno, it's just a little weird to call someone Rose when I always thought of that as just her name. It's not a problem."

"You could just call me 6OP, my Diamond," 6OP said. "That's what my cohorts called me."

"Oh!" Steven was relieved despite himself. "Okay. Nice to meet you, 6OP."

"It's a pleasure to serve, my Diamond," 6OP said cheerfully. "By the way, do I have this right? That Amethyst over there knew the rebellious Rose Quartz somehow, because she winced when I pointed out your discomfort. I'm assuming it was the rebellious one you knew, because otherwise she'd have been bubbled, and I guess that means Pink Diamond was a rebel, too. So why do you still have her mural up?"

"Um," Steven said, panicked. He glanced over at Amethyst and saw her talking with the other guards. No help there. "Because... it... looks nice?" Maybe he shouldn't have brought 6OP out in this room...

"It does look nice," the Rose Quartz agreed. She admired the mural-- a stylized Pink Diamond, holding Earth up above her head-- for a moment. "By the way, if you don't mind me asking, my Diamond... when do the rest of us come out?"

Morganite said, sending a quelling glance at the chattering Amethyst guards, "We were thinking, as a way to get Homeworld used to Rose Quartz again, of unbubbling eight Rose Quartz as a sort of honor guard for Pink Diamond's Court, to get gems used to your presence again. This would allow the news to spread of your return without causing any undue panic. After all--" She grimaced. "Rose Quartz are remembered as the gem type that killed Pink Diamond. With the mess of rumors surrounding Pink Diamond's return, I'd say it's best to be diplomatic."

"That sounds smart," 6OP said approvingly. 

"Yeah..." Steven trailed off. "Where can we have them make an appearance, though? I've been kinda secluded lately." He wasn't excited about making an appearance in front of a ton of Homeworld aristocrats, either. He got the feeling the politics were messy.

Chocolate piped up, "Actually, my Diamond-- I'd forgotten to mention it earlier, but with Blue and Yellow Diamond's extended trip, the responsibility of overseeing the scheduled cosmic jubilee for Homeworld falls to you. Perhaps... and I don't mean to be presumptuous, my Diamond... you could debut the Rose Quartz there?"

"That _would_ be a good time," Morganite mused.

Steven jolted. "Wait, I have to host a party? A gem party?"

"I-- yes?" Chocolate tried. "It's not for a few cycles yet-- that's about a month, in your reckoning-- but it's a very big event. One of the Diamonds is  _always_ there."

"Huh." Steven bit his lip. "I don't know anything about gem parties. I guess there isn't any cake... is there music? What do people do for fun?"

The Pearl tilted her head to the side a little, letting her bangs fall away from her gem, then started to project images of the jubilee into the air as she narrated. "The cosmic jubilee is mainly an excuse for aristocratic gems to show off their accomplishments-- rightfully theirs, of course-- and to view entertainment. If it's on Homeworld, as this one is, it's expected to be especially grand, and a Diamond always attends. The best of all three Courts will be there-- four, now, since you've returned."

The hologram showed large groups of gems: Sapphires, Emeralds, Agates, and other upper crust, along with their guards and servants. It flickered through different images-- of a scowling Yellow Diamond leaning forward to watch a troupe of dancing Pearls, of a coliseum full of competing Quartz soldiers, of another Pearl singing on a stage, of the unveiling of a new colony-- the images went on and on, until Steven felt dizzy watching. "My Diamond, it would be the perfect time to show your power and to prove your legitimacy to the masses-- many of them will only have heard of your return through hearsay, and it would be wise to assure them of your presence in person."

"It... seems like a lot." Steven shifted nervously. "You said we have a month to plan?"

"There's time, my Diamond," Morganite said firmly.  "Until then... may I suggest we fetch the other seven Rose Quartz? We'll need to start building up your Court at once."

Steven glanced over at 6OP, who was deep in conversation with Amethyst and the other three guards. "Yeah," he said, "I think that's kind of a priority."

He didn't want to face a bunch of gem politicians without a lot of people who knew what they were doing on his side, because he had to hold things together until Blue and Yellow came back to run everything again. If the Gem Empire fell apart while they were gone, he'd never forgive himself, and they'd probably never trust his opinion again. And he  _needed_ their trust, and their support, if he was going to help make life better for everyone.

If avoiding all that meant organizing a party... well, he'd already helped plan Ruby and Sapphire's wedding. How much harder could a cosmic jubilee be?

*

Chocolate waited in one of the near-abandoned citadels at the edge of the palace and used all her hard-won willpower to keep from fidgeting now that no one was around to see her. Hands folded, body poised, she stood by the entrance to the rarely-used building and waited. She didn't have to wait much longer.

Lavender Pearl crept into the citadel, glancing furtively back and forth. When she spotted Chocolate, her luminous eyes went wide, and she scurried over to join her. "This," she said softly, "Is _very_ illegal."

Chocolate grinned. "Only if we get caught," she said, "and I've been careful to avoid that possibility."

The other Pearl snorted. "By tricking some poor Peridot, yes, you mentioned. _Very_ stealthy, that."

Lavender was beautiful even for a Pearl: her large, innocent eyes, paired with pale purple hair that pooled down to curl on her shoulders, had made her the envy of many of the palace aristocrats. There had been offers to buy her off the ranks of the courier Pearls (directed at the Sapphire who ran them, of course) from a number of eager patrons. Only Lavender's skill at delivering messages-- the fashion on Homeworld was to deliver them by Pearl, in person, especially for political dealings-- had kept her from being sold and carried away to some distant colony as a status symbol.

Chocolate was glad of that. Aside from Lavender, she'd never met another Pearl willing to go along with her ideas. Lavender was quiet, and delicate, and more focused on avoiding Court politics than trying to change them, but above all that she was brave. She had influence among the other couriers, too. In that, Chocolate could never hope to match her.

"I'm still surprised you knew how to use that little contraption I gave you," Lavender continued, still in that soft undertone. "I couldn't get it to work at all."

Chocolate shrugged. "It's a matter of research, that's all." She glanced around for observers, then asked, "Speaking of politics...?"

Lavender said, "If you're referring to that task you asked of me, then yes, I did manage to compile a list of the most common rumors surrounding Pink Diamond. Though I can't imagine what you want with them." Her quiet voice held a note of concern. "If you're trying anything reckless..."

"It's perfectly safe," Chocolate promised. "Also, I don't have a choice."

"It's an order?"

Chocolate shook her head. "Just something I have to do," she said. "I'll explain in a second. First, could you tell me what you heard?"

"If you insist." Lavender subsided. "In essence, nearly everyone believes Pink Diamond to be a real Diamond and not an impostor, and the few who think otherwise are keeping quiet about it. They also, in general, believe that the Crystal Gems carried out some form of sabotage that made her lose her memory and her original form. Many specifically blame Rose Quartz, and theorize that Pink Diamond was kept prisoner on Earth until the Diamonds attacked, killing the remains of the rebellion, and she managed to escape. There's a lot of conjecture floating around, even if it's all just court gossip. No one seems to know anything for sure."

Chocolate frowned. "What do they believe about the other Diamonds' absence?"

"Of  _course_ you'd know something about that," Lavender sighed in lieu of responding. "I don't suppose you're willing to tell me? No?"

"I could have been ordered not to," Chocolate pointed out.

"You aren't covering your mouth, and if you had been you'd find a way around it," Lavender said with a teasing grin, "so don't even try that with me. But if you insist on keeping your secrets..." She mock-sighed and looked away. "I suppose I can't stop you. Now, as for the Diamond rumors... most gems are suspicious of how long they've been out of contact, but most have also convinced themselves that this is some sort of leadership test of Pink Diamond, or perhaps a way to take a break. Aside from a few on the fringes, most don't consider Pink Diamond to be responsible in any way for their absences." She looked up at Chocolate as she delivered the information, then pouted. "Stars above. You really aren't giving anything away, are you."

Chocolate smiled and shrugged. "Not this time, Lavender. I  _did_ give that Bismuth your message, though. She said--" Chocolate leaned over and whispered the message into Lavender's ear. Lavender smiled back.

"I-- thank you, Chocolate. But that and the rumors can't be the only reason you asked to meet me here, away from prying eyes. And you did promise to tell me what you needed those rumors for..."

"I did, didn't I?" Chocolate said. After another covert glance around the citadel, she whispered, "Lavender-- you know the situation between my Agate and I, in regards to Pink Diamond."

Lavender's face darkened. "Yes," she said, "and I wonder why you haven't turned her in to Pink Diamond yet. She'd be likely to keep you around, wouldn't she? From what rumors say, she has a habit of showing clemency. And if you're caught spying, you'll surely be shattered."

"And if I turn my Agate in, she'll tell everything about me and I'll be shattered anyway," Chocolate gritted out. "It's not even what she knows, at this point. I can make myself useful enough to Pink Diamond that he might overlook my flaws. But if anyone looks into my owners _before_ Patuxent River Agate--"

"Pink Diamond could forgive that, too," Lavender said uncertainly. Chocolate shook her head. 

"You don't know the whole of it. I can't-- I can't risk anything getting out." The Morganite was thorough, after all, and she didn't know the capabilities of all of Pink Diamond's guards, and she was so close to her now, she'd never be able to escape in time...

Her Agate was lax, and blunt, and cruel, but she was an enemy known. Chocolate could control how bad things got with her, to an extent. She had for five thousand years. Pink Diamond was unfamiliar. 

Chocolate didn't know how to tread, with that kind of master-- didn't know how far that kindness reached, or what it might be hiding. She looked into Pink Diamond-- into  _Steven's_ face-- and she couldn't tell what he was thinking. She couldn't read his eyes at all. Chocolate was one hell of a risk taker, but she didn't have that kind of faith. And Pearls were so very, very replaceable. 

But that speech, and the way he'd cried, and been so surprised at the Morganite's fear, like he couldn't imagine why a Diamond might inspire terror...

But the way he'd said _even for Pearls..._

"So I'm giving myself a third option," she said with new resolve, "and that's where I need your help." Lavender perked up.

"Pink Diamond is an enigma to the Courts right now," Chocolate continued. "No one knows what to think of her. And with this decree-- gems are worried, aren't they. They're confused, and the gossip's gotten out, and any number of colonizers are about to get their lives turned upside down. That's a recipe for instability. I want to help stave it off."

She leaned forward and grabbed Lavender's hands in her own. "Lavender, I know this is asking for a lot, but... I need you to spread rumors for me. I need you to ask your Bismuth to spread them among all the trainees, before they leave Homeworld. I need you to get the other Pearls mentioning it to anyone they know, until it's all over the Courts. I need-- Pink Diamond has to be known as a  _Diamond_ first, not as an interloper. As someone who cried from anger at the-- the incompetence of colony administrators, who gave a fair sentence because she recognized skill when she saw it, who came back stronger from the rebellion on Earth and is ready to rule. All the rumors of weakness, of sentimentality, of not being a real Diamond at all but some kind of organic impostor-- those need to be drowned out. And I don't know where else to turn, I--" Chocolate composed herself. "Lavender,  _please._ I can't-- I don't want to see Pink Diamond overthrown."

Lavender watched Chocolate for a moment, expressionless, then pulled her hands away. "That _is_ a lot," she said in her quiet voice. "You're asking me to rise above my station and attempt to influence the opinions of all of Homeworld. You're asking me to use my connections, and maybe endanger others as I do. You're asking me to  _rebel,_ because just the nature of this request, to a Pearl, is rebellion. Do you understand that?"

"I do," Chocolate said, just as soft. "I really do. But if Pink Diamond's overthrown, there's nothing left but power games. Not for a long time. And those will kill a lot more gems than this ever could."

Lavender bit her lip. "So the other Diamonds  _have_ disappeared." Chocolate nodded, and Lavender sighed. "All right. I'll do it. But only because we've been friends for so long. And I'll have to add some things about how attached the other Diamonds are to Pink Diamond, to deter any potential threats."

Chocolate's face lit up. "Thank you, Lavender, I-- really. If there's anything you need me to do in return, just ask, okay? I owe you like a thousand favors for this."

Lavender gazed at her worriedly. "Just be alive so I can ask for them, Chocolate. That's all I want for now. Oh, and send me any information you have on Earth and its inhabitants. Pink Diamond likes Earth, doesn't she?"

"I think so," Chocolate said. She pulled up a screen and transferred the information. "What do you need this for?"

"You'll see," Lavender said with a mischievous smile. "You're not the only one who can come up with ideas, you know." She clutched at Chocolate's hand and squeezed. "But stay safe, all right? You're playing a dangerous game, now. If you're caught doing anything-- spying, conspiring to influence the Courts,  _anything_ \-- it won't matter whose side you're on. You'll be in the same amount of pieces either way."

"Always an optimist," Chocolate whispered, smiling. "I will. Thank you, Lavender."

The other Pearl left just as quickly as she'd appeared, leaving Chocolate alone in the dark room to think. In a moment, she'd have to go back to Pink Diamond with some sort of errand done as an excuse for why she'd been gone. In a moment, she'd be a Pearl again.

For now, she fantasized about what would have happened if she'd been formed an Emerald, or an Agate, and dreamed of how to change an empire.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven has a few meetings to get to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a lot longer to write than I thought it would. Anyway, thanks for all the kudos and comments, they really mean a lot to me.

 The Rose Quartz brought up her shield just as Amethyst's whip slammed into it and used the momentum to fling Amethyst over her head. Amethyst laughed and twisted, landing on her feet. "Hey, Steven, are you seeing this?" she called back to the edge of the arena. "These guys are awesome!"

The Quartz in question-- 7XC, an experienced veteran-- flipped her hair over her shoulder. "You're damn right we are!" she said with a grin. "But you've got some pretty good moves yourself."

Amethyst sketched an exaggerated bow. "Why,  _thank_ you. Wanna go again? Bet I can get you this time." She bounced in place. Steven grinned; her excitement really was contagious.

"Pebble, there isn't a gem in the Empire who's broken past _this_ shield," 7XC said proudly. "But hey, maybe it's your lucky day."

" _Maybe_ it is!" Amethyst charged the Rose Quartz again. Steven dragged his eyes away from their sparring and gazed around the arena at all the other gems present. The Quartz's boisterous laughter rang out through the air. Every member of his guard-- minus the few that had elected to stay at the Human Zoo-- was fighting the eight unbubbled Rose Quartz, or each other-- most using forged weapons, with a few more experienced gems using summoned ones. Steven wasn't sure they'd be able to repair all the property damage a whole pack of rampaging Quartz soldiers could cause.

It was nice seeing them having so much fun, though. And he was getting a better idea of what Rose Quartz could actually do. Shields seemed to be a part of it.

"My Diamond," Morganite started. She stood next to Steven, holographic screen floating in front of her face, and watched the sparring with a look of bemusement. A statue at the edge of the arena crumbled and fell to the ground with a crash as a pair of Amethysts scuffled around it. They stepped around the rubble without breaking a sweat, and Morganite grimaced. "I don't mean to be rude, but what was the point of all this, again? We don't usually allow Quartz soldiers to go this wild outside of the barracks or a war zone."

Steven said sheepishly, "I just thought it'd be easier to be kinda subtle about this. Chocolate said no one ever uses this arena anymore."

The Pearl raised her eyes from her own screen at the mention of her name; she was standing back by the entrance of the arena, far from the crowd of Quartz. Steven waved, and after a moment, Chocolate raised a hand and waved back. Steven continued, "Anyway, the party's supposed to have entertainment and stuff, right? I thought maybe the Rose Quartz could put on a show. Y'know, to show everyone they're not... bad people."

Morganite hummed thoughtfully. "That could certainly work, my Diamond. Have you chosen a choreographer?"

Steven tried to remember the definition of 'choreographer.' "Chocolate said she knows a Pearl who's really good at that kind of thing. Does that count?"

Morganite nodded. "Pearls  _are_ known for their grace and ability to entertain. It's what they're made for, after all. Though usually they wouldn't be placed in any sort of leadership position over other gem types." She didn't sound judgmental or angry, just considering. "If her acquaintance is as skilled as she says, then there's no reason not to bring her into the project, my Diamond."

"Okay! I guess that's settled, then!" One of the Rose Quartz parried Carnelian's strike with a sword and jumped up into the air, flying in a wide arc over the other gem's head. Carnelian met her in the air, and they crashed to the ground. Morganite flicked a speck of dirt off her shoulder. Steven rose up on tiptoes and stared over at the sparring gems. "Huh. So jumping high  _is_ a Quartz thing." He looked down at his hands. "I wonder what else is a Quartz power." If his mom had been impersonating a Quartz... Garnet had to have seen Rose Quartz before, or at least Ruby and Sapphire had to have, so she must have been using mostly powers a Rose Quartz would have. Steven wondered how much stuff he could do that he didn't even know about, just because his mom had never done them in front of anyone but Pearl.

He'd been hoping that he could try out some of his powers here and see what new stuff he could do.

Only one way to find out, right? Steven jogged into the arena. "Hey, Amethyst!" he yelled. "Wanna spar?" The fighting around him stopped, every Quartz halting in her tracks and staring at him. Steven blushed. He hadn't meant to make everyone else  _stop._

Amethyst landed in front of him, and he switched his focus to her. "Yeah, sure," she said, rolling her shoulders. "We haven't sparred in a while, huh. This should be _fun_." She grinned, and Steven grinned back, shifting into a ready stance. "Okay, on three. One, two--" Amethyst summoned her whips and charged-- "three!"

Steven bounced backwards, out of range of Amethyst's whips. One of them reached and wrapped around him, and with a snap he summoned his bubble and broke it. Amethyst laughed, and the fight was on. 

He threw his shield, and Amethyst leaped up and used it as a springboard, somersaulting over his head and landing behind him. Steven turned around to block her next attack just as his thrown shield cut through a stone pillar, and it crashed to the ground. He winced; at least this arena had been abandoned already, right? Or maybe he could get it fixed.

The next few minutes were a blur of magic and quick thinking-- Amethyst caught Steven's arms with her whips, Steven yanked her over his head, she threw him across the arena (Skinny Jasper backed up a few feet), he summoned spikes on his bubble and crashed down-- and the whole time, the Quartz soldiers stayed out of their way. 

Steven wasn't sure why-- his and Amethyst's fight wasn't actually any more destructive than theirs had been.

No, he thought as Amethyst tackled him and they rolled across the ground, that wasn't true. He did (he twisted out of a headlock) know why. They saw him as Pink Diamond, as a leader, as someone  _untouchable._ They didn't think they could see him as a friend. 

If he wanted the arena, the arena was his and his alone.

Steven grimaced. The fact that Diamonds tended to be super-powerful and careless with other gems' lives probably played a part, too.

"Why the long face?" Amethyst taunted, jumping back out of range of his shield. "Is it 'cause you know you're gonna lose?" Steven didn't think she'd actually make him lose; Amethyst was pretty goofy, sometimes, but she wouldn't want to make him look weak in front of all the Homeworld gems. She'd fight him to a standstill, maybe, so it would look like they'd just wound down on their own, but she wouldn't beat him just for the sake of it. They knew each others' capabilities too well for that.

"Aww, come on, I thought we agreed no trash talk!" he teased, watching carefully for Amethyst's next attack.

Amethyst laughed, shapeshifting into her wrestler form. "But that takes all the fun out of it!" She roared and ran at Steven, and he met her in midair.

It was just like their wrestling days-- sparring to get into sync, beating all their opponents but each other-- and for a moment Steven forgot where they were entirely. Forgot Homeworld, forgot the Diamonds' disappearance, forgot the eyes on them both, until all that was left was him and the gem who'd helped raise him and who'd taught him to take the time to laugh, to play, to relax. A warm love rose up in his chest.

Steven grappled, and Amethyst met him move for move, skills they'd learned from training together over and over until they watched each others' backs instinctively, until they could face any threat together, until they were _unstoppable_ , until--

Until-- 

_They were moving as one--_

Steven jerked back as fast as he could and met Amethyst's wide eyes with his own. He could feel his magic moving under his skin, eating at the edges of his physical form and reaching for Amethyst's. The edges of her form were glowing. Oh, no,  _that_ wasn't good.

"A-actually, I thought we might do something else now," he babbled, trying to distract himself. "Remember those seeds I brought from Earth?" They'd been included in his food and water supplies, from Lapis and Peridot; he'd only discovered them a couple of days ago when he'd been rummaging for junk food.

Amethyst shook her head like a wet dog, driving away the fusion-glow. "Yeah, what about 'em?" She still looked a little shaken up.

Steven grinned and tugged the seeds out of his pocket. Not watermelon, this time. Just morning glories. They probably wouldn't turn out sapient. He hoped. "Just something I wanted to try," he said, and then, with a burst of pink magic, he slammed the seeds into a crack in the ground.

The floor of the arena started to rumble; the guards moved toward the edges of it, glancing at Steven nervously like they weren't sure if they should be trying to protect him or what. Little pale green leaves sprouted through the cracks in the ground, opening and tilting toward the sun, then toward Steven, growing and thickening and twining around pillars--

Amethyst sprang into the air just as a mass of thick vines lashed at her former location. The morning glories twisted among themselves like snakes, growing thicker by the second, until they were the size of tree trunks. They spread out along the ground and surrounded the whole arena, braiding up to become thicker and coating the whole place in dense foliage. Giant buds pulled out into the open air, flushing pink and widening into trumpet-shaped flowers. Amethyst laughed in surprise from her new perch on top of a boulder. "Dude, did you  _mean_ for them to get this big?"

"N-not really, but it's pretty cool, right?" Steven stood in a clearing, vines whipping all around him, and stared up at the plants. They were starting to lash around aimlessly, like they were looking for something. Carnelian reached forward to touch a leaf, and the vine it was on whipped towards her in warning, making her jump back.  _Please don't become sapient and start waging war, please don't become sapient and start waging war..._ "Actually, Amethyst? I'm not sure I thought this out."

"Well don't just stand there, dude, see what they can do!" Amethyst jumped up, completely distracted from their near-fusion. "Can you, like, control them or whatever?"

Steven frowned. "I... don't know. Usually they just kind of think for themselves." He glanced over to 7XC, who was staring unabashedly at the mass of vines. He didn't think any of the Homeworld gems had noticed how Smoky Quartz had almost made an appearance. That was a relief. "Uh, is this a Rose Quartz thing?"

"I can safely say that it is _not_ , my Diamond," she said, still staring. Another giant morning glory blossomed pink-and-white streaked, gleaming in the Homeworld sun. "At all. Did-- did you not know you could do this?"

"I don't remember anything from when I was Pink Diamond," Steven said self-consciously. "Or-- the old Pink, I guess. Could she do this?" He looked over at Amethyst.

She shrugged. "Well, yeah. Remember the moss thing? That counted. Maybe Homeworld just didn't know about the organic stuff. I mean, it's not like they have a ton of it just lying around." She made a face. "The Watermelon Stevens were pretty weird even by _Rose's_ standards, though." And they'd waged war on everyone and formed a religion based on self-sacrifice and mollifying a giant, dysfunctional fusion. Steven wasn't sure he wanted that happening again.

"Huh." Steven looked up at the vines and experimentally raised a hand. The vines coalesced into a giant hand, like a mecha from a cartoon, and he went starry-eyed. " _Whoa_. Amethyst, this is so _cool._ " He wiggled each finger carefully, then did a Vulcan salute.  _Live long... and prosper._

He made a plant fist, and the Famethysts started clamoring for attention. "My Diamond! Steven!" 8XJ yelled, hefting a broken-off column over her head. "You can punch this!" She threw it into the air. Steven watched its trajectory carefully, then drew back his fist and slammed it forward. The column exploded into debris, and the arena swelled with cheers. Skinny Jasper and 6OP lugged another boulder into the center and launched it, and Steven's vine-fist destroyed it just as easily. 

They spent a while just messing around, destroying things and making the vines bloom rainbow flowers, until Steven thought his grin couldn't get any wider.

Even the thought of how he'd almost messed up and fused in front of  _everyone_ couldn't dampen his fun.

*

Lavender Pearl, Chocolate's dancer friend, curtsied to Steven, but didn't salute. Steven got the feeling that Pearls weren't actually required to salute, since Homeworld didn't think of them as people. Now that he thought about it, Chocolate had never really saluted much either. Homeworld etiquette got more complicated every time he thought about it. "My Diamond," the Pearl said softly. "I am at your service." 

"It's nice to meet you," Steven said, a little dazzled. Her dress was  _really_ shimmery. "Uh, Chocolate said really good things about you. Do you think you could organize a performance for all these Rose Quartz?" He gestured behind him; 6OP, wearing her standard pensive expression, waved. "And, um, not... mention... them to anybody? We're keeping them a secret until the jubilee."

Lavender nodded. "Of course, my Diamond." She looked over the eight lined-up Rose Quartzes curiously. "May I... may I speak with them?"

"Of course!" Steven said. "Yeah, you can-- you're gonna be their choreographer, you'll be telling them what to do and stuff." He hoped they wouldn't get mad about having to take orders from a Pearl. 

He wished, a bit, that  _his_ Pearl, the woman who'd helped raise him, was here instead of back on Earth. She  _loved_ dancing and organizing. But someone had to stick with the Crystal Gems on Earth, and Pearl hated being ordered around. Homeworld wouldn't treat her well at all.

Lavender Pearl blinked. "Very well, my Diamond. Then... I will speak to them now." She bowed, smoothed out her skirt, and made her way past Steven to the line of Rose Quartz. He saw her bow to them, too, then heard her start speaking in a soft, quick voice. The Quartz soldiers broke formation and made their way to the other side of the arena.

The arena, surprisingly, was still functional: somehow the vines had receded, mostly, back under the ground, and their tangled stems shored up the crumbly parts of the structure. Morning glory flowers, blooming pink and white and sunburst magenta, wreathed the arena, twined around broken-off columns and scarred-up statues and pressing thin green tendrils into open cracks. They made the air smell cleaner, and their leaves offered shade at the edges of the clearing. He'd even seen a few of his guards plucking off the smaller flowers and putting them in their hair. 

A pang shook him. Steven hadn't realized how much he missed Earth until he'd brought its plant life with him. At least his supplies were running out-- it meant he could go back for another visit, and hopefully get advice from Garnet and the other Gems on how to get the Diamonds back so he could go home permanently. He liked Homeworld, mostly, and he didn't want to leave everyone he'd met vulnerable if he left, but it had nothing on Beach City.

Just the  _thought_ of fry bits was enough to make Steven contemplate running for it and warping home.

He took advantage of the nervous energy and made his way over to Morganite, Chocolate, and Amethyst, instead. Carnelian, keeping a lazy eye out for any threats, was otherwise occupied watching the Rose Quartz start to train. Chocolate, from what Steven could tell, was more focused on watching her light purple friend instead.

"Thanks for recommending her," Steven said to Chocolate, who raised her eyes, startled, from Lavender. He laughed self-consciously. "I wouldn't've known who to ask about that kind of thing here. Usually when I have to organize a party I just ask Sour Cream to DJ and get out the grill."

Chocolate's expression said plainly,  _I have no idea what you just said._ Then she seemed to set her face to something more professional and said, "There's-- no need to thank me, my Diamond. I live to serve, after all."

Steven winced. "You didn't have to mention her, though," he said, thinking his words through before he said them. "You just-- I'm not ever gonna get mad, if a gem does something she wasn't made to do, or if she makes a mistake, or something. But... maybe if I was someone else, mentioning your friend could have put her in danger, because she's able to take charge, even if it's for something she's supposed to know everything about, and Pearls aren't supposed to do that. So, thanks. For trusting me like that." He felt a little embarrassed as he spoke. That was a lot of emotion to dump on someone he didn't know all that well, even for him. "I know you didn't have to."

Chocolate Pearl stared at him, then made an aborted movement, almost like she was going to kneel. When she spoke her voice was thick with emotion. "My Diamond," she said with quiet fervor, "I-- thank you. You're-- you're a good leader _,_ and-- and I won't tell _anyone else_ what you just said to me." She bowed, a quick bobbing movement, babbled, "I've got to arrange a few more meetings for later today. I-if you'll excuse me, my Diamond?" and fled.

Steven watched her go, incredibly confused, then turned toward Amethyst. "Was it something I said?"

"Yeah, probably," Amethyst said, stretching her arms. "I dunno, I wasn't really listening. _Our_ Pearl's always freaking out over stuff, though. Maybe she just remembered she had something to do."

"Yeah, maybe," Steven echoed. He made his way toward Morganite, who was watching the Rose Quartz show off their moves to Lavender Pearl. She turned to him as he approached. "Hey, Morganite? Who am I meeting with later today?" She and Chocolate worked together on scheduling and organizing stuff, he was pretty sure, since Morganite had more authority and could legally make decisions Chocolate couldn't. 

Morganite said off the top of her head, "I believe... there was a Morganite asking what was to be done with a few condemned prisoners, now that you've made your decree, and after that there's an Aquamarine requesting an audience. Hmph. I don't mean to be rude, my Diamond, but honestly, these could both have been dealt with by video call. I can't imagine why the Aquamarine, at least, thinks she deserves to meet a Diamond in person. Especially  _this_ one," she said scornfully, "who technically failed her last mission, even when given two Topaz as backup."

Steven felt an unpleasant thrill of recognition. "Oh. Great," he said weakly. "How long do I have before the meetings?"

Morganite pulled up a screen. "The first one is in about an hour, my Diamond," she said. "That's about the condemned prisoners. The Aquamarine... well. It's your prerogative, as a Diamond, to deny any gem anything you please. You could always choose not to give her an audience." She side-eyed Steven. "If that's what you want, of course."

Steven blushed; not as subtle as he'd thought, then. But-- "No," he decided. "I think I'll meet her. If she wants an audience, it might be something important."

"And if it's so important that it can't wait, she should just tell one of your subordinates instead of risking something time-sensitive for the sake of bragging rights," Morganite pointed out. "Not to be presumptuous, of course, my Diamond. It's merely an observation."

Steven shrugged. "I think I might have met her before. Bragging rights... sound like something she'd want."

Morganite gave a wry smile. "Of course, my Diamond. And, naturally, either I or your Pearl will inform you when it's almost time for the first meeting."

Steven smiled back. If he had to be stuck on Homeworld, at least he knew gems who knew what they were doing. "Thanks, Morganite. I'm glad you're in my Court." He meant every word.

*

The Morganite prison warden was slimmer than the one Steven knew, with longer hair and a colder expression. She gave a perfunctory salute and said with no inflection whatsoever, "My Diamond. There are a few prisoners who were condemned to harvesting by Blue and Yellow Diamond but were not yet executed at the time of your decree. What do you propose we do with them."

"What kind of gems are they?" Steven asked. He leaned forward in the oversized throne, feeling like a little kid playing with his dad's furniture. "What were they gonna be executed for?" 

The Morganite drew up a screen, still expressionless. "The gem types and crimes are as follows: Citrine, stole technology from an Era 1 Peridot for personal use; Amethyst, shattered a squad of Rubies and cracked the gem of a Hessonite in a fit of rage; Amber, attempted to hijack an ship and leave the Empire for a desert moon; Amber, assisted the first Amber with this attempt; Amber, assisted the first Amber with this attempt; Nephrite, assisted the Ambers with this attempt; Yellow Zircon, insulted a Diamond; Blue Zircon, accused both Diamonds of conspiracy to murder a fellow Diamond." She paused, dismissed the screen, and deadpanned, "It's been very busy recently."

"Right," Steven said, glad his voice didn't crack. "Okay, um-- where are they right now? Are they in cells, or are they bubbled?"

"They have been bubbled, my Diamond."

Steven nodded to himself. "Leave Amethyst in her bubble, unless-- do you know why she killed all those gems?"

The Morganite said, "To quote her ranting, 'They were all unworthy and didn't deserve to live as gems.'" The Morganite Steven knew rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath. It sounded like  _of course she did._

"O-kay," Steven drew out. "Yeah, leave her in her bubble. But... I want to see the rest of the prisoners myself. The Citrine alone, the Zircons together, and the hijackers together, too." He wondered if the attempted hijacking had happened before or after the other Diamonds disappeared. Would he have heard of it, if it had happened after? The Empire was so big, after all...

Would he have known, if the Zircon who'd represented him as Rose Quartz had been killed for stumbling across the truth, even if it happened while he was visiting Blue and Yellow? Would they even have bothered to tell him? Would they have remembered or cared? How common was execution here, that Blue Diamond had thought it was too merciful for Rose Quartz and had created punishments even more terrible?

Sometimes he could let his guard down and think of Blue and Yellow as his sort of weird, giant grandmas. Other times he thought of the Cluster's panic, and how desperately his family had fought, and the fact of their tyranny stayed at the forefront of his mind. Ruby, in Garnet's story about how she and Sapphire had met, had called herself  _replaceable..._

"Of course, my Diamond," the other Morganite droned, cutting into Steven's thoughts. She saluted and left the room. Steven saw Chocolate type something rapidly and wondered a bit regretfully how much he'd just added to his schedule.

He stuffed a sandwich into his mouth and swallowed it whole before the first meeting, just in case he'd be at them for a long time. Morganite very carefully (he could tell) didn't comment.

The warden brought the Citrine first: a sleek, twitchy Quartz soldier who admitted to stealing tech because she thought it was fun to play around with. Steven just reassigned her to work more closely with tech-oriented gems because-- and Morganite had mentioned this as an interesting idea, and he didn't see why not-- the same lack of resources that justified his decree about bubbling also meant they had to utilize existing gems more creatively. So that was okay, and no one got poofed.

The Zircons weren't so easy. His former defense lawyer walked into the audience chamber, stopped just past the doorway, and  _stared,_ mouthing  _what_ to herself like she couldn't believe her eyes. The yellow Zircon stopped to see what she was looking at and blanched. "My Diamond!" she blurted out, saluting expertly. "My most sincere apologies for my behavior during you-- during the trial, I was only following orders--"

"Diamond?!" Blue Zircon cut in. She looked like she was standing on the ragged edge. Steven wasn't sure he'd ever seen her look any other way, but then, he hadn't known her all that long. "What-- does that mean-- there _was_ something strange about the whole affair!" She turned and jabbed a finger in the yellow Zircon's face. "I  _told_ you! Assigned or not, I can certainly do my job to a level of perfection that _you_ could only aspire to!"

Yellow Zircon puffed up, seeming to forget about the Diamond in front of her and the warden glaring hopelessly at her back. " _Aspire_ to-- I'll have you know that with our knowledge at the time I had that case all but won! And if it hadn't been for your reckless accusations we wouldn't be in this situation!"

"And if that had happened, a _Diamond_ would have been shattered!" Blue Zircon declared, waving a hand at Steven. Then she froze, looking somewhere between flabbergasted and terrified, and turned to look at Steven for the first time since she'd started arguing. Yellow Zircon paled, doing the same, and inched closer to her rival. "Th-that is to say, my-- my Diamond... Not that I mean to imply that I value my own reputation over your return, or that my opponent wished you any harm whatsoever..."

"It's just a job, you see. It's what we're made for." Yellow Zircon added nervously, wringing her hands. She side-eyed the Quartz guards in the room.

Steven cut in, "It's okay! You thought I _killed_ Pink Diamond back then-- everyone did! And you did just do your jobs. Actually, Blue Zircon, you pointed out what was wrong with the whole story, so technically you helped me figure everything out. Sort of." He waved a hand. "The point is, you didn't do anything wrong."

"So we aren't condemned?" Yellow Zircon asked hopefully. Steven nodded. She brightened. "Your illustriousness, you truly dazzle every room you enter with your power and your glory."

"Wait," Blue Zircon said, almost like she couldn't help herself. "On-- on what grounds?" She threw her hands up and started pacing, looking more and more stressed with each step. "You, you can't just-- override the Diamonds' will! We disrespected them!" Yellow Zircon elbowed her. "Well, I did," she amended. "I accused them of conspiring to  _murder_ you! What makes you able to overrule their decision?" Why was she even asking this? From the expression on her face, she didn't seem sure either. Maybe it was a Zircon thing, where they had to follow the law, like how Onion had to do the most disquieting thing every time he and Steven were together.

Steven almost panicked for a second-- no one had actually asked what authority he had to  _contradict_ Blue and Yellow before, and did he have that authority? Did it matter, if they weren't around? "Well," he said, racking his brain for ideas, "it's... an Earth thing! From when I was on Earth. That I remember." He felt confidence creep back in. _This_ was something Onion, at least, was familiar with. "It's... an ancient rule, that every person on Earth knows from when they're really little, called 'finders keepers.' Basically, if someone else gets rid of something, or loses it because they don't really care about it, or anything like that, then anyone who finds it can keep it. So, because Blue and Yellow decided they didn't want you around anymore, and I decided I do want you around, you don't have to be condemned anymore. Um, that's-- that's pretty much how it goes."

Blue Zircon's expression morphed from anxious to considering. She tapped her chin. "So, under this law... and for you or other Diamonds only, I'd assume... you have the authority to take any gem you wish under your command, so long as another Diamond has rescinded their claim? Even if that gem wasn't made for your Court?"

"Yeah!" Steven confirmed, relieved. "I mean-- you could be in my Court, if you wanted. Since you helped me out and all. You too, Yellow Zircon."

The yellow Zircon jumped to attention. "Thank you, my Diamond!" She frowned. "Though there  _will_ be a color clash, with the pink..."

"My Diamond, we accept," Blue Zircon said over her, stepping hard on Yellow Zircon's foot. The other lawyer gem scowled at her.

"Cool!" Steven felt awkward. The sooner these gems' lives weren't in his hands, the better. "Then... you're free to go, I guess. Check in with Morganite here to figure out what you're supposed to be doing later."

"My Diamond, we won't let you down!" Yellow Zircon said with a salute. Blue Zircon echoed her and did the same, and the warden Morganite escorted them out of the room. Steven let his breath out in a  _woosh_ of relief.

Chocolate said into the ensuing silence, "My Diamond, your next meeting is with the attempted hijackers, at--" She went silent as she was interrupted by a high, strident voice. Steven, Morganite, and Chocolate all stared toward the door, where it sounded like someone was arguing with the guards. Steven had an irritated feeling that he knew who it was.

"'Scuse me, 'scuse me, coming through!" The gem's voice soared through the air, sounding posh and pushy in equal measure. Steven recognized it (he'd been right!), and immediately he wished he hadn't. The two Quartz guards by the audience room's door crossed their weapons and tried to block the entrance, but the little blue gem flittered between their arms, landing primly before the throne.

Aquamarine bowed, ribbon bobbing, and gave a winning smile. Steven tried not to sigh.

"My Diamond!" she said after a quick salute. Steven gritted his teeth. Wasn't he supposed to meet her later? Why _now_? Maybe he could have just tried not to see her at all. "I thought I'd come early for our audience. I have some information you'll want post-haste, you see, so I thought I'd cut short the wait." She gave a cutesy head tilt, looking for all intents and purposes like a refined little girl. "It  _has_ been a while since we last met, hasn't it, my Diamond? I hope that neither of us will be holding any grudges."

Steven was pretty sure that if Morganite had actual blood, her blood pressure would be skyrocketing. The administrator said, teeth clenched, "What, exactly, makes you think that you may barge in on a Diamond and address her in this way?"

Aquamarine barely glanced at her, looking bored by the question. "As I said," she said slowly, like she thought Morganite was stupid, "I have information she'll want to see."

"Why should I listen to you?" Steven asked angrily. "You  _attacked_ me the last time we met! You took me and Lars prisoner! And you were a jerk then, too!"

The little gem widened her eyes beseechingly. "But my Diamond, that was all on orders from your older counterparts! And at the time, you were hardly known as a Diamond-- everyone thought you were a war criminal. How was I to know who you really were? And anyway," she added, waving a hand, "the organic was fine. It isn't as though it  _died._ "

Steven took a moment to digest that. Lars  _had_ died, and he would have stayed dead if Steven hadn't managed to cry him back to life, and what did Aquamarine think she was doing, anyway, being small and awful and mean and barging in like she could just-- just-- do whatever she wanted? 

But Peridot had been bad, too, even if she hadn't been  _as_ bad, and Aquamarine  _had_ just been following orders, and when the Topazes had rebelled... Huh.

Maybe this didn't have to be as bad as Steven had thought.

"The two Topazes who were with you... when we last met," Steven started, watching Aquamarine carefully. "What happened to them?"

Aquamarine frowned like she was looking for the trap in the question. "They... went back into Yellow Diamond's service, of course. They'd been loaned out for the mission."

... Which meant that Aquamarine hadn't reported their attempted mutiny. She'd talked them out of it, she'd accused them of sentimentality, she'd made fun of Steven and Lars and been rude and terrible... but she hadn't reported their attempt to poof her. She'd promised they'd never speak of it again, and she'd kept that promise. And even if that was all just to save her own skin...

From what Steven could tell of Homeworld, and of Aquamarines and their ranks, she'd gone easy on them. She hadn't even attacked them, even though she'd been able to stop all of the Crystal Gems with her wand-- even though all of Homeworld would have agreed that she was within her rights to shatter them.

"Okay," Steven mused. He relaxed a little, and saw his guards do the same. Oops. He hadn't meant to freak them out like that! Now he felt bad. "Yeah, okay. What did you want to tell me?"

Aquamarine curtsied. "My Diamond," she said sweetly, "before I start, may I suggest that you send any _unnecessary_ gems out of the room? This is very sensitive information, after all. You wouldn't want it reaching the wrong ears."

Steven looked around: the Famethysts (minus Amethyst; this wasn't her shift), Chocolate Pearl, Morganite, and Aquamarine. Morganite didn't know the whole of the Diamond disappearance thing, but he was pretty sure she'd guessed at this point, and anyway he had to tell her about it soon, so why not now? And the Famethysts didn't know, but they knew a lot of other stuff about Steven... Still, better safe than sorry, right? That was what Pearl always said when she was organizing Steven's toys by size and color. _Wouldn't want to lose any, would we? Better safe than sorry!_

Steven really missed living on Earth. A few weeks was already too long to be away, and it was shaping up to be longer. He pushed the homesickness from his mind.

"Uh, 8XJ? Jasper? Would you mind guarding from the other side of the door for a while?"

"Of course, my Diamond!" 8XJ and the Jasper said in unison, saluting. Steven felt proud for them; they'd been practicing that, and now they had it down! Usually they were kind of off.

"Thank you!" he called after them as the chamber door closed. He thought he saw the Jasper give a thumbs-up before the door closed completely. 

Aquamarine made a dubious face, probably at how Steven had actually been polite to someone he wasn't trying to impress. "You can talk now," Steven told her, trying not to make his discomfort with her presence too obvious, and she shook the expression from her face.

"Right," she said skeptically, looking at Morganite. Steven shrugged. She rallied. "Well then! Being a Diamond, you are of course aware of the locations of the other Diamonds, and you'll know about the colony Bretta 5, where Yellow Diamond has recently travelled." Her wide, innocent eyes suggested that she knew he didn't know, and that she thought herself very clever to have figured this out. "Well, I was recently looking over the last few transmissions from that colony, and..." She trailed off.

Steven wondered why she'd been looking at the transmissions at all-- maybe she'd been suspicious? How many other gems felt the same way? This could be bad-- and then, as the expectant silence went on, Morganite broke and snapped out, "Please continue." Aquamarine glanced at Steven instead of responding.

"Please just get on with it, Aquamarine," Steven told her, more than a little annoyed.

Aquamarine curtsied again, sending a smug look at Morganite. "Of course, my Diamond," she chirped. "As I was saying, I was going over the last few transmissions from Bretta 5, and I noticed that they're on a loop-- a subtle one, or the gems monitoring it would have spotted it if they had any skill at their jobs at all, of course-- where the same five transmissions are repeated with minor changes over and over again, every five cycles. No new information at _all_."

Morganite leaned forward, eyes gone sharp and enmity apparently forgotten. "From _Bretta 5_?" she asked. "That's impossible-- that colony's in the middle of development. Half the planet is still untouched! They should be transmitting new information every cycle."

" _Hence_ my concern," Aquamarine said primly. "And it can't be the organics on the surface-- there's no sapient life, from what I can tell, barely anything advanced enough for a skeleton. There's something wrong on the _gem_ side of things."

Steven blinked, trying not to look too lost. "Wait, so... someone's trying to make it look like everything's normal, even though it isn't? How'd no one notice, if there's nothing new coming in?"

Aquamarine preened. "It's not as if _every_ gem's first thought is  _sabotage._ If I hadn't thought to look it up myself, I don't think anyone would have noticed at all."

Morganite grimaced. "That _is_ possible," she agreed reluctantly. "And, my Diamond-- It could, in the best case scenario, be an attempt to cover up administrative failure, or just the result of a lazy gem. But I know the Hessonite assigned to Bretta 5, and she would never allow slacking on transmissions. _Especially_ not during such an important part of Kindergarten development."

So it was something worse, then. "Do you have her personal number?" Morganite looked confused. He revised his lingo for Homeworld and said, "I mean, can you contact her yourself? Like, personally?"

Morganite hmmm'd to herself. "There's an old administrative line I could try," she said contemplatively. "We used to work terraforming the two halves of a planet, so we had to keep in touch... ah, here it is." She pulled up a screen. "Would you like me to attempt to contact her, my Diamond?"

"Go ahead, please," Steven said, craning to get a better look at the screen. Chocolate glanced up at him, stepped forward, and offered a hand to Morganite; when the two touched, Chocolate's eyes went distant and the screen projected large from Chocolate's gem. Aquamarine flew around to get a better look, but stayed out of the screen's view, while Morganite made the call.

The screen stayed blank for a while; Morganite frowned, fiddled with the controls, and the screen slowly cleared, opening to show an dark, empty room that looked a lot like the moon base. There was a mosaic of Yellow Diamond on the far wall with a deep crack down its center, and strewn across the floor were fragments of some kind of tech. A shiver ran down Steven's spine.

"This isn't right," Morganite said quietly. "The communicator is a tool, like a Peridot's limb enhancers. It should be on her person, not lying on the ground like this. I don't know what could have happened that she'd lose it."

"That's a broken gem destabilizer there on the floor," Aquamarine said curiously, flying closer to the screen. "Now, what could they have needed that for? Some sort of  _rebellion,_ maybe?"

"Shhh!" Steven hissed suddenly, staring intently at the screen. Something in the background had just shifted, shadows moving against the wall. The other gems fell quiet. Steven coaxed, hoping it was another gem, "Hello? It's okay, you can come out now. I promise you're not in trouble." 

No response. "It's probably just an organic," Aquamarine dismissed. "Those things _probably_ wander in all the time."

"Yeah, maybe," Steven said, unconvinced. "Morganite, can you zoom in at all? Or move the camera around?"

"Let me see..." Morganite tapped a few commands, and the screen widened to a 360 view like Lapis's surface observation orb, surrounding them in a simulated base. Steven stared around at the dark, decrepit room: at the Diamond throne, part of the back sliced off as if with a sword; at the shattered murals, Pink Diamond's image nearly unrecognizably mauled; at the glittering shards littering the floor in front of the throne, opalescent white shimmering in the screen-light. 

Chocolate said softly, eyes filmed over, "Those are the shards of a Pearl, my Diamond," and Steven shuddered.

"Oh," he said weakly. Had she been Yellow Diamond's Pearl, or Blue's? Or just some random gem who'd gotten caught in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Morganite said soothingly, "There don't seem to be any signs of a Diamond in combat, my Diamond. Certainly not enough damage to the surrounding areas." 

Not a Pearl he knew, then. Steven wished that didn't make him feel better. "This doesn't seem like it was a rebellion," he said to fill the silence. He didn't think any rebellion against Homeworld would kill a Pearl, not when most of them were so non-violent. They'd want to liberate them instead, wouldn't they?

"No," Morganite agreed, a little contemptuously. Oh, right-- she didn't actually like the Crystal Gems, did she? "They'd at least try to pretend to run normally, if it were. Or they'd declare themselves to try to gain more support."

A flicker of movement by Yellow Diamond's mural, and Steven clambered over the side of the throne, floating down to get a closer look. "Hey, Morganite? Can anything see us over there?"

"Yes, we'll show up as holograms on this setting--" She cut off as the shadow underneath the mosaic seemed to gather into one large, sinuous form. " _What..._ is that...?"

The shadow creature stalked like a big cat around the edges of the wall, scratching at the ground; its paws were the size of car tires, and its body was composed of mottled blacks and grays that made it blend in to the darkness. Steven could only barely make out the edges of its silhouette. "Well. That's surprising," Aquamarine piped up, staring at the creature. "You think it's this thing that shattered the Pearl?"

The creature shrieked just as she spoke, an ear-splitting sound that made Steven's head ache, then turned, snarling, and dashed toward them. Steven stumbled back and raised his bubble, prepared to fight--

\-- and the 360 view went spinning like a carnival ride, perspectives rolling over themselves as the implant skittered across the ground. He put away his bubble sheepishly, and saw Aquamarine lower her wand, eyes wide. Chocolate wavered on her feet, blinking cross-eyed, and the view cut back to a large screen, hovering in the air. 

A great black head appeared in the center of the screen, eyes covered by a dark fringe. It nudged at the communicator, growling deep in its throat; then it reared back and slammed down, and the communicator shattered. 

The screen fizzled out. 

"My Diamond?" Chocolate said into the sudden silence, voice shaking. "That was-- in its forehead-- that was a _gem_." 

Steven stared at where the screen had been, picturing the beast in his head: its bulky form, its strength, its unfocused anger. The dark black gem, shining dully in the center of its forehead. Corruption, far from Earth, in a place no Diamond should have targeted.  _And someone was trying to cover it up._

"This... isn't good." His voice sounded thin and young to his ears. 

" _Now_ do you believe me when I said it was urgent?" Aquamarine asked long-sufferingly, hovering in the air.

Steven couldn't even muster the energy to glare.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a few conversations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... still can't believe there are over 200 kudos on this. Thanks for those and for commenting!

"My Diamond," Morganite asked, voice only barely steady, "what, exactly, was that?" Her hands were clutching at her side, like she wanted a weapon.

Steven swallowed. "It's Corruption," he said, and the gems in the room all turned to him. It was strange, having to explain Corruption to Homeworld gems. Some part of him still felt like they should be like the Crystal Gems-- already knowing about Corruption, and all the history behind it, and leaving Steven to catch up to millennia of damage control. "It's... something that happened to most of the gems on Earth, because of the Diamond attack. Their minds got messed up, so they can't think right or take a form or remember who they are. Blue, Yellow, and me can reverse the effects temporarily, but we need White to make it permanent. They were going to contact her about it before they-- before their trip."

Aquamarine landed on the ground and crossed her arms. "Well, it's  _very_ inconvenient timing, leaving for a trip _now,_ isn't it. You think this was a sort of test run, for some future mission?"

"Bretta 5 is one of Yellow Diamond's planets," Morganite said coldly, "so, no. She'd never use such a vital resource, especially not one populated with loyal gems, to test a weapon of mass destruction. It's practically treasonous to imply such a thing." 

Aquamarine yawned. "It's only a suggestion," she said lightly. She widened her eyes at Steven. "Why don't you just call her and ask, my Diamond? She was visiting a colony near there recently, wasn't she?"

A colony, Steven remembered in sudden mortification, that had been destroyed when the Diamonds disappeared. And hadn't he-- no, he didn't know if he'd remembered to look into that. He'd just sort of assumed someone was already dealing with it. Oops. With all the other stuff that had been thrown in his lap three and a half weeks ago, the exact circumstances of Blue and Yellow's disappearances had slipped his mind. He  _really_ hoped his panic wasn't showing on his face.

"I'm supposed to be figuring stuff like this out on my own," he equivocated. "So I don't think she'd want me to call her." Hopefully Aquamarine was one of the gems who thought his ruling Homeworld was some kind of test. "Uh, Chocolate? Do you remember who was investigating that colony near Bretta 5? You know, the one-- the other one with the weird stuff going on?"

Chocolate frowned, then straightened in understanding. "My Agate-- that is, Patuxent River Agate, who you've met, my Diamond-- took charge of the investigation. I... believe... that she considered the results beneath your notice, since they were inconclusive."

"What?" Steven scowled, then softened his expression and grimaced when he saw Chocolate flinch. "Oh, sorry-- but that's-- how is that beneath my notice? I mean, aren't Diamonds supposed to deal with problems like that?" Even if he'd completely forgotten. Ugh.

Aquamarine snorted and waved a hand. "If gems went to the Diamonds for every little difficulty the empire could _never_ function. This Agate's only doing what she's supposed to."

"Except," Morganite interrupted, glaring daggers at the little gem, "that mysterious, extensive damage to a colony is the  _exact opposite_ of a 'little difficulty.' For all we know,  the situation on Bretta 5-- and on its sister colony Bretta 3-- could be the result of an attack."

"An attack?" Steven asked, frowning in confusion. "Like the rebellion on Earth?" He wasn't even sure how he'd address that, or if he'd want to. Maybe some kind of compromise?

Aquamarine scoffed, "What else could it be but other gems? It isn't as if Earth organics could make it all the way to the next galaxy over.""

" _Earth_ organics certainly couldn't," Morganite said mildly, glancing at Aquamarine. "but they're hardly the only other sapients out there."

"None of them are advanced enough to attack us, though," the younger gem said, making a face. "Are they?" 

Morganite hummed. "It's a possibility, actually. Though you wouldn't remember the last time it happened-- it was before even Pink Diamond's creation." She glanced lightly at Aquamarine. "Honestly, what do you think we have soldiers for?"

"Whoa, whoa, wait," Steven gasped. "You're  _that_ old?"

A smile. "I was only barely formed, at the time, so my memory of the whole affair is rather hazy. And--" She glanced at Aquamarine-- "I wouldn't suggest letting this information spread beyond this room. It's hardly common knowledge nowadays, and for good reason." She grimaced. "It was something of an embarrassment for a while."

"My Diamond," Chocolate suddenly piped up, glancing nervously from Steven to Aquamarine, "am I needed here, for this conversation? I've-- I've just remembered some urgent errands I need to complete."

"Right," Aquamarine said dubiously, looking the Pearl up and down. Steven didn't think she'd really noticed her presence before. "Who told you you could talk?"

"I did!" Steven snapped. "And she doesn't need permission to talk, so don't be such a jerk to her." He turned to Chocolate. "You can go if you have stuff you've got to do. Just-- could you be back in time for those Ambers and everyone, in their meeting? I think I might need you for that."

"Of course, my Diamond," Chocolate said. She bowed and fled the room.

Morganite waited until she left the chamber, then cleared her throat and said, "Shall I begin, then?" Steven nodded. "Well. It was millennia ago, of course, when the planning for Pink Diamond's creation was in its beginning stages-- in fact, her creation may have been spurred on by the incident. A recently colonized planet-- we called it Temer 10-- was inhabited by a species of organics who had just barely discovered space travel. They fought back when we arrived, discovered new methods of using their resources to create devastating weapons that worked best in their stratosphere. They even lured a small fleet into their atmosphere and firebombed them from just below orbit, shattering every gem they could and scattering the rest across their planet's surface. White Diamond, the rumors go, suggested that they simply destroy the planet and salvage what was left, but Blue and Yellow disagreed." Morganite shrugged. "It hardly mattered, in the end. When they saw that they were losing-- that they were being driven from their homes, that their planet's resources were being taken from them-- they resolved to take them from the empire, instead.

And they took their new technology, their budding advancements and their salvaged science, and they stole energy from the shards of gems they'd destroyed, and they blew up their planet and all the gems developing it. It was a great loss for the empire." Morganite glanced cautiously at Steven, then added, quieter, "A greater loss, I would think, for the organics. We never could figure out how they got the technology to harvest gems in the first place."

"They couldn't have-- stolen it, maybe?" Aquamarine asked, sounding almost uncertain. "If they'd stolen everything else, that is."

Morganite shook her head. "The way they used the technology, and utilized gem  _shards--_ that wasn't something even Homeworld was experimenting with, back then. With their level of civilization--" Again, the cautious glance at Steven, like she thought she might be yelled at or something-- "it would have been nigh-on impossible for them to develop harvest technology so quickly."

Steven felt sick. "But they did," he said weakly, "and they all died because of it. How many times has something like that happened?"

He forgot, sometimes, that the gems-- even his family, even his  _mom_ \-- were aliens, from an empire that had conquered and stolen the life of thousands of planets. An empire that didn't see any other species as worth living, that had set itself to constant expansion, that was ruled by three despots who treated their subjects like tools more than people. An empire that had almost destroyed the Earth, long before he was born. Like the Empire in Galaxy Wars-- the bad guys of everyone else's stories.

He forgot, sometimes, just how brave the Crystal Gems had actually been, in defying it. Now, seeing the easy way Morganite spoke of genocide-- and how careful she was, in his presence, not to say anything that could be construed as sympathetic to the aliens or negative toward the empire-- he couldn't help but remember.

Morganite frowned and considered the question. "I know it wasn't the only time the empire faced violent resistance to colonization-- it's been around for billions of years, after all, and it spans galaxies-- but I don't believe it's anything more than a rarity. Most planets, even those with prime resources for Kindergartens, don't have much life on them, and even with high levels of biodiversity, sapience is a rarity. The most recent war was Earth, and that was with other gems. There certainly aren't any colonies with sapient aliens  _now."_

"Oh," Steven said, ashamed of his relief. If there had been sapient aliens-- scared, and hiding, and having their  _homes_ destroyed-- he would have had to stop the colonization of their planets, would have had to help them somehow or leave them be. He didn't know how he could have made that seem like something a Diamond would do. Or how he could have managed it without a Diamond's power to back him. "Okay, then."

"Some even say our history  _starts_ with advanced organics," Morganite continued, "so they certainly figure in our past, however some gems may like to deny it. An empire can't spring from nothing, fully formed, after all."

Aquamarine scowled. "Now what do you mean by  _that?"_ she demanded. "How could we start from-- from something _biological_?"

"Stars, you _are_ young." Morganite rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm hardly going to give you a full history of the Gem Empire-- though naturally, my Diamond, if you require one I'll gladly oblige-- but in short, it's theorized that the first gems were created by some sort of ancient organics, who were then wiped out by our naturally superior predecessors. Though in my time it was frowned upon to so much as mention it-- now, I suspect, it's practically forbidden. Even if it  _is_ considered, because of the Diamonds' refusal to confirm it, less fact than conspiracy theory."

"Huh," Steven said. "I... guess that makes sense." If gems came from Kindergartens, after all, then someone would have had to create the first one. It was a lot to think about.

A knock came from the chamber door, and he yelled, "Come in! Aquamarine, you stay." The door slid open, and the prison warden Morganite strode in, followed by three Quartz soldiers, who were corralling a trio of orange gems and a lone Nephrite. Chocolate closed the door behind them and made her way back to Steven's side.

"My Diamond," the other Morganite said with a salute, "these are the attempted hijackers you requested to see." The condemned gems saluted as well, staring. All four of them had yellow diamond insignias on their uniforms. Steven glanced at the Nephrite (gem on her back, he thought) from the three Ambers-- smaller, slender orange gems, one of whom was crackling with static. 

"Thanks," he said to the Morganite with a distracted smile. "Um, could you guys stand back a little? I wanna talk to them." Steven got the feeling having three burly Quartzes at their backs made the four prisoners kinda nervous. The guards stepped back, and Steven smiled reassuringly at the four would-be hijackers. The Nephrite hesitantly smiled back.

"So, uh," he started, not sure where he actually should start, "why'd you try to steal a ship, again?"

The tallest Amber, fidgety and yellow-orange, with her gem in her palm, said, "We... wanted to run away from our stations. My Diamond. Our supervisor was-- less than ideal, and we decided it was better to risk getting caught leaving than to be stuck working under her any longer, since either way we probably would have been shattered." She raised her head. "We Ambers are mostly used for ship maintenance, and as disposable fighters, my Diamond, and Nephrite is one of hundreds on our colony. And-- and it was a small ship, practically junk. We weren't taking any essential resources from the empire."

"We  _really_ weren't," a smaller Amber added. "I was gonna be harvested for incompetence anyway! So we thought we'd go looking for adventure instead."

The other Amber, smallest and frightened-looking, said, "We didn't mean any disrespect toward the empire or to you, my Diamond, we just-- we just wanted to get away, since we weren't any use anyway, our supervisor kept telling us that, and we were gonna be replaced, anyway--" She sparked, and the guards readied their weapons, and she flinched back-- "It was my idea! Please don't shatter us!"

"I'm not gonna shatter you!" Steven cut in. "Let's just-- no one's getting harvested or anything, okay? That's not why you're here." They were all tense, he realized. Tense and scared, putting on brave faces because they didn't know what else to do. His heart ached. Why had he only smiled? If you didn't know what someone was like, them smiling at you could be as scary as it was comforting.

"Oh." The Nephrite paused, then ventured, "Then why _are_ we here, my Diamond?"

"Because..." Steven trailed off as an idea started to form. "Because there's community service you could do," Steven told the prisoners carefully, "that would count as your punishment for trying to desert, if you'd want to accept it. There's other options for stuff that doesn't include what you just mentioned, too, if you want, but... Nephrite, you're a pilot, right?" A nod. "And you guys can fly a ship together, even if it isn't the best?" A chorus of nods. Steven glanced at Aquamarine, who'd been staying blessedly silent the whole time, even if she seemed bored out of her mind. "Okay. Then your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to go with this Aquamarine to investigate a colony that's gotten really messed up by something really dangerous she'll tell you about later. You're not-- you shouldn't try to fight or anything, just observe from a little closer, like from the colony's moon base, and report back. And you'd have to do it as quietly as possible, without letting other ships know where you were going." He caught Chocolate's eye and said, "No one else is gonna be allowed to land at that colony, anymore," and saw her nod and pull up a screen to make sure that was true.

"What?" Aquamarine demanded. "I-- my Diamond, one of these Ambers just admitted to being incompetent! You can't give me  _them_ to lead!"

Steven quashed a swell of dislike. "You're just going along because you're the one who reported it," he said placatingly, "and because you can go undercover and keep people from noticing you're there. They already work really well together, so you won't have to do much leading."

"Wait," the medium Amber said suddenly, "you mean you're sending us on an  _adventure?_ " Her voice went high with excitement.

"It's a mission, for community service," Steven corrected, watching the warden Morganite carefully, "but... yeah?"

" _Yessss,_ " the Amber hissed.

The Nephrite rolled her eye. "We accept, my Diamond," she said firmly. "And-- thank you. Really. You seem-- you seem really nice." Steven blushed.

After they gave the coordinates and every gem but Steven's Court left the room, Steven turned to Morganite and asked, "What colony are they from? Do-- do you know?"

"I do," Morganite said carefully. "Would you like me to look into their administrator?"

"Please," Steven practically begged. "It-- it sounds like she's really bad."

Morganite ventured, "If I may be so bold, my Diamond, as to give some advice?" Steven looked up and nodded. "You've been giving out a lot of pardons, and you've been making a lot of changes. Changes for the better, it may be said, but changes nonetheless. And our empire is used to staying nearly the same for millennia on end. For now, for some reason, the consensus is that you're concerned about resources, not that you're sentimental." Chocolate perked up a little, in the corner of Steven's eye. Morganite continued, eyes grave, "That may change, my Diamond. My advice is to be careful. Let gems see you do things that Diamonds have always done-- coordinating colonization, and overseeing the cosmic jubilee, and organizing the creation of new gems. Politics is a delicate game, even for a gem of your stature."

"I don't think I'm cut out for politics," Steven admitted. "It all seems like another language to me." 

Morganite laughed quietly. "You're a  _Diamond,_ " she said firmly. " _Leading_ is what you're cut for. Politics is something you'll have to relearn." She gave a slight smile. "Still. No one says you have to learn it alone."

*

Pink Diamond had to sleep, a ritual Morganite supposed to be some sort of Earth thing, for eight hours out of every twenty-four, on a consistent basis. The chambers would have to be dark, imitating a planetary night sky, for sleep to be achieved, and there had to be minimal interruption from other gems. It reminded her of the organics on Eta 11-- the little mammals, which curled up in mounds hundreds-thick to keep warm in the subzero climates, and the long-legged ungulates, taller than Quartz soldiers, which had always rested standing up. That, too, she supposed, had been an example of  _sleep._ It was strange to consider any sapient being that had to shut off for so long just to function. It gave Pink Diamond a vulnerability that he may not have been able to afford.

(And in the war on Temer 10, had those organics slept? When their camps had been invaded, when their fragile skulls had been crushed and their nests burned, had they been blissfully unconscious? Or had they known they would die? They would have had to know, because nothing lived to defy the empire. 

Not even other gems were allowed that luxury.)

Morganite made her way down a corridor, nodding respectfully at a few of Pink Diamond's guards as she passed them by. A couple of aristocrats glared at her as she went by; Morganite suspected that if it weren't for the pink insignia on her chest, they would have done more than glare. Homeworld politics were foreign to her, after so long in the empire's outskirts, where feuds took the form of skimping on resources, and ordering surprise inspections, and targeting your enemy's more vulnerable subordinates. Petty things, which every logical gem in the Empire should have been above. Yet after that Hessonite had insisted on taking offense to Morganite's every success, she'd been fending off sudden malfunctions, biased inspectors, and delayed shipments from every direction.

And it seemed-- Morganite's fists clenched-- that despite all her efforts, Hessonite had won in the end. The lazy, petty, incompetent gem, who couldn't even keep a _moon base_  running if she were given an army of capable gems and a manual, had bested her by going through Homeworld-- something Morganite, determined to prove her reliability, would never have considered doing. She'd thought their feud was between them, like such disagreements always were. She'd thought Hessonite knew the meaning of the word  _honor._ And she'd worked so hard, she'd clawed her way up from the small-group management Morganites were made for through sheer competence, she'd won the respect of her subordinates and the tolerance of her superiors (her  _equals_ )...

She'd done all that, and then Hessonite had thrown a fit and turned to Homeworld's insular politics, their scheming close-contact backstabbing, and had said,  _this Morganite has risen above her station, as some of them do, but now she's made a mistake and you don't have to tolerate her any longer._ Had said,  _she's committed treason, and I can prove it._ And then there had been that last inspection, and Sea Glass's fatal misstep, and the trial, and the fight--

\-- and there had been Pink Diamond, shielding Desert Glass and Lapis Lazuli's gems, and insisting that Morganite hadn't done anything wrong. Pink Diamond, giving her a position of power as a 'punishment', because her days as a colonial administrator were over, and turning to her for advice, and trusting her expertise, and never once asking what a Morganite could know about such large-scale dealings when she was made for middle management at _most_. 

 Morganite appreciated that more than she could say. 

She made her way to a deserted service hallway, one that Pink Diamond's Pearl had recommended, and waited for another gem to pass by. Nothing. It truly  _was_ more-or-less hidden. How fortunate.

(And what Pink Diamond's Pearl was doing, knowing so many hidden places and speaking out of turn, Morganite knew better than to ask.)

Morganite sat cross-legged against the wall, feeling somewhat silly for going to such lengths of secrecy, and pulled up a screen to make a call. For some long seconds the call went unanswered. A cold ball of fear formed in Morganite's chest. Had Eta 11 been attacked as well, since her removal? No, no, they couldn't have been. All the relevant reports had come in, not looped or altered in the least, and Morganite had gone over every one of them herself, because what in stars was the alternative-- ignoring them? Forgetting her responsibilities just because they'd been taken from her? Leaving her subordinates to be mistreated? And she'd been so careful, choosing her successor, but she had to know--

A click. Morganite relaxed just as the screen blurred and brought an earnest blue face into view. "My Morganite!" Lapis Lazuli 4GB said happily. "So you  _are_ okay! We've all been really worried."

A rush of warmth. "I'm glad to hear that," Morganite said, keeping her voice soft. "Is everyone all right? Have there been any incidents?" She could see a glittering expanse of ice behind Lapis, interspersed with darker veins of liquid water. 4GB had been scouting when she received the call, it seemed. 

4GB grinned. There were snowflakes in her hair. "Well, Watermelon Tourmaline got herself poofed again, and it was Larimar 5TH's fault, but at this point that's not even news. And terraforming's been going fine, but we're having a lot of trouble finding a place to expand the Ceta Kindergarten into." She bit her lip. "We would've extended north, but the big ungulates are all raising their offspring there right now, and we've already had to chase them away from all the new Rubies-- I think they're confusing them with those red-leaf bushes, they keep trying to eat them-- so we thought we'd try to go west instead, but now we've hit a giant lake and there's nowhere to move the water to. So 4GA thought she'd get the Desert Glass's to make another lake, but there's a lot of ice just under the surface, and we'd have to find a place to herd all those little three-legged mammals to..." The terraformer shrugged and said sheepishly, "Gotta say, my Morganite, it'd be a lot easier to do all this if Sea Glass were still around. Or if you were. When are you coming back?"

Morganite held back a flinch at the plaintive question.. "I'm... confined to Homeworld, for the foreseeable future."

"Oh," 4GB said, crestfallen. "So the trial didn't go well, then. Are 4GD and 9FM-- were they shattered?"

"No," Morganite told her, "but they _were_ bubbled. And... they're in a safe place, at the moment. They aren't in any danger." She pressed on. "But your new supervisor hasn't arrived yet?"

4GB frowned. "New supervisor? No, no one's come yet. Who was it supposed to be?"

"An Emerald I've known for a while now. She's trustworthy, and she treats her subordinates well. I thought she would be a good fit."

" _You're_ a good fit," 4GB grumbled. "Don't get me wrong, I'm happy you weren't shattered, but I wish Yellow Diamond hadn't demoted you like this. We need you here."

"Yellow Diamond?" Morganite stared. "Who told you it was Yellow Diamond who oversaw my trial?"

"Who else would it be?" 4GB asked blankly. "You're under her command, aren't you? And I mean, we've heard that Pink Diamond's active on Homeworld lately, but we didn't think her decree would affect _you_. And Blue Diamond wouldn't care at all about a Morganite."

"You..." Morganite paused and recalibrated for the distortion of rumors that occurred so far from Homeworld. "Ah, never mind. Pink Diamond was the only Diamond on Homeworld at the time of my trial, and he gave the bubble decree to keep Sea Glass from being shattered, from what I can tell. I've remained on Homeworld because he needed an advisor."

"Oh." 4GB slowly grinned. " _Oh._ So you've been promoted, then! Ha, I knew they'd have to recognize your ability eventually! It's true, then? Pink Diamond's decree applies to _everybody_? Is she really as nice as people say?"

"Nicer," Morganite said ruefully. "I'm not sure Homeworld can handle it."

" _Well,_ then," the Lapis Lazuli said cheerfully. "I hadn't really believed the rumors, but I guess that's pretty great. Would've been nice to have a decree that like under your predecessor." Her face flickered somber for a moment. "Still. Gems are saying all sorts of things about her out here. There was a Bismuth who stopped by to repair the South Citadel, and she said Pink Diamond wants to address the resource crisis and that's why she doesn't want any more gems shattered. And someone else said that the Diamonds are planning to give her a bigger role, since she survived the Earth Rebellion intact even though everyone thought she was dead. Is that true? Do you know?"

"It's true that she's worried about the resource crisis, and that she doesn't want any more gems shattered," Morganite equivocated. "Though I'm not sure about that last one. Who can claim to know a Diamond's motivations?" She frowned. "Emerald should have arrived by now, though. That she hasn't... it worries me, I must admit. Has anything strange happened, lately? Anything unexplainable?"

"There _have_ been-- well, I don't know if this counts, but transmissions? We think? You know how we're on the very edge of Gem space so we never accidentally intercept messages?"

"Except for that time with Larimar 5TH, of course," Morganite pointed out with a smile.

" _Ugh,_ yeah, she's hopeless sometimes, I swear," Lapis groaned, but there was fondness in her voice. "We honestly can't tell if it's intended for us or not. We'd have to amplify it to hear what it says, but it feels so weird just looking at the wavelengths that we thought it might be an attempt at sabotage from  _that Hessonite._ The only one of us who tried to listen to it was 5TH, and she said it didn't sound like anything." 4GB brushed away some ice that had crystallized at her eyes. "She's been acting normal since, so I guess it was okay. Maybe it's just junk signals from a star or something."

"Maybe," Morganite murmured. "So how has the terraforming of the West Rim been going?"

Lapis Lazuli perked up. "Well..."

Morganite tried to focus on the conversation, but the thought of the strange transmission clung stubbornly to the back of her mind for the rest of the day.

*

Rose Quartz 6OP watched the light purple Pearl demonstrate a dance move to a pair of other Quartz and mapped the angles of her limbs in her mind. Pearls were delicate, slender gems, made for litheness and grace, and it showed in their forms: small, thin, made for quick, agile movements. An Amethyst, built for sturdiness and firepower, couldn't execute the same maneuvers with anything near such elegance. As she watched, the Pearl adjusted the move-- punchy, showy with power, more suited to a soldier's physique-- and showed it to the Quartz group again. It was going to be a sort of dance-fighting, like a choreographed battle. Just watching everyone practice sent a happy thrill down 6OP's spine.

She was daydreaming about the possible applications of fighting Pearls-- assassins? Undercover agents? It would never happen, but it was thrilling to imagine-- when a small purple gem plopped down at the edge of the arena beside her and plucked a flower to play with it in her hands. 6OP regarded her curiously. If she recalled correctly (and she was starting to realize that she  _always_ recalled correctly), this was Amethyst 8XM, Pink Diamond's favorite, who liked to pretend that she'd always lived with Pink Diamond's guards. Oh, well. Gems liked to pretend a lot of things. 6OP didn't see the harm of playing along.

"So why aren't you over with the rest of the Rose Quartz?" 8XM asked, nodding over at the other five gems at the other side of the clearing. They were chatting amongst themselves and playing with the vines. 

6OP said, "I've already got the move down. Why aren't you with the other Amethysts?"

8XM snorted. "I already know how to dance. This ain't  _nothing_ new to me." She waved a hand in the air, then leaned forward intently. "Hey, can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead," 6OP said, curiosity sparked. "It's not something weirdly personal, is it? I'm not sure I've existed long enough to have anything weirdly personal to share."

"Uh, no," the Amethyst said, laughing. "Yeah, no, _no_ , dude. I wanted to ask--" She bit her lip. "Do you ever... I mean, do you guys ever, like, feel mad at Rose Quartz, for the rebellion?"

"You're asking if we're ever angry about the fact that a rebellious Diamond claimed to be a Rose Quartz and caused us to be made an example of as a gem type, ruining all our lives and making it so no Rose Quartz were ever created again?"

8XM winced. "I-- yeah. Stupid question. Wait, do all of you guys know about the Pink Diamond thing?"

"No, just me," 6OP said with a shrug. "Except Pink Diamond was confused about what was a Quartz power and what was a Diamond's, and his gem is pink, and he was found on Earth. It doesn't take a genius to put everything together, I don't think." She thought for a moment, then added, "And it wasn't a stupid question. I mean, I've only been alive and aware for like three days. I don't know how I feel about the first Pink Diamond, because I don't know how I feel about a lot of things. But I know the other seven feel betrayed. Not every Rose Quartz was lucky enough to be bubbled. Some of them lost friends."

"Oh." 8XM grew more solemn. "Yeah, that sounds pretty bad. I'm... kinda surprised the same thing didn't happen to other gem types."

"They wouldn't have had any gems left, if they'd done that," 6OP pointed out. "I'm surprised they didn't discontinue Pearls, though. Wasn't there a renegade Pearl in the Crystal Gems?"

"Yyyyeah," the Amethyst said awkwardly. "Uh. There was." Still was, from the sound of it! 6OP decided that discretion was the better part of valor and didn't mention it. "Do you think they're mad at Ste-- at Pink Diamond?"

Across the clearing, the Quartz soldiers all shouted as one and punched at the air. The light purple Pearl grinned at their synchronization and twirled in delight, bobbing between them to correct their postures. "I don't think so," 6OP said, tearing her eyes away from the scene. "He isn't the same Pink Diamond, is he? Not  _really._ "

"No," the Amethyst said. "No. He's really not."

She looked up at another shout, from the soldiers, and then she was up and running, looking panicked, and 6OP spun around just in time to see the edge of a crumbling column fall-- to see 8XM dive to push the Pearl out of the way-- to see a boulder clip her and destroy her form. The Pearl's gem clattered to the ground, unharmed, and one of the Rose Quartz gasped, "I'm so sorry, I didn't see it falling!"

"It's okay, she's just poofed," 6OP called after giving the gem a cursory look. She looked over the group. "Does anyone know where the other Pearl is? Chocolate Pearl?"

"I can find her," 8XM volunteered. "Or find someone who can find her, whatever works." She picked up the Pearl's gem. "I mean, how hard's it gonna be?"

*

The abandoned auditorium where Chocolate and Lavender had met was only accessible through a length of old hallways and a path through an old Kindergarten. Chocolate had never seen anyone besides herself and two other Pearls use the space; it was one of the few places she felt almost completely secure.

It was where she practiced, when she had to be sure she could do everything expected of a Pearl. 

She went through a few forms, and then a song that Pink Diamond-- that Steven-- had been singing sprang to her mind. "I can't help it if I make a scene," she hummed as she practiced, not really knowing what half the words meant, "stepping out of my hot pink limousine-- I'm turning heads and I'm stopping traffic, when I walk they look and when I talk they listen..."

She let her voice soar as she went on, since no one was around who could punish her for forgetting her place. The lyrics were thrillingly, horrifyingly confident-- perfectly suited to a Diamond, less so to a Pearl. Chocolate had never known the like. 

An unwelcome voice just  _had_ to interrupt her. "Whoa, is that music? That sounds, like, really nice!"

Chocolate spun around with an apology on her lips; it died as soon as she saw who had spoken. "Wait,  _you?_ " she sputtered. "What are you doing here?" She barely remembered to add, "My Peridot."

The star-haired Peridot held out a familiar gem with a grin. "I told the short Amethyst who was looking for you that I knew where you were," she crowed, "and I did! So here's your friend. She got poofed somehow." She trotted up to Chocolate and placed the gem carefully in her hands, then backed up a few steps to look up at her. "I didn't realize anyone else ever came down to this level!"

"Neither did I," Chocolate said blankly, staring down at Lavender's gem. She really hadn't expected choreography to be so risky. Had Lavender mouthed off to the wrong person? Made some sort of misstep? But then why wasn't she bubbled? And anyway, Lavender barely spoke, she wouldn't just insult some random gem or speak out of turn in the first place... "Well, thank you."

"No problem!" the Peridot said, cheerfully oblivious to any and all hints at how  _maybe_ Chocolate wanted to be alone right now. "I'm Peridot Facet 13 Cut 5RQ. Who are you?"

"I'm... a Pearl, my Peridot," Chocolate reminded her, a little irritated. "We don't have facets."  _I take it you've never been on Kindergarten duty, or you'd know that._

"Huh. You know, I'd never thought about that." Peridot 5RQ tilted her head. "So how do you tell each other apart?"

Chocolate blinked. She'd never been asked that before. "Colors, mostly. I'm chocolate brown, for instance. The Pearl in my hands is lavender."

" _Weird,"_ the Peridot breathed. "So, hey, uh-- are you still doing that thing? That Diamond thing? 'Cause I didn't just come here because of your friend, I wanted to tell you that I can help!" She stood straight and put on a serious expression. "I've been researching things, too.  _Hidden_ things. And sometimes I even risked getting poofed!" She clasped her hands. "I could be useful to Pink Diamond's cause!"

What. "Shouldn't you be useful to  _Yellow_ Diamond's cause? That's the insignia you wear, isn't it?" Seriously, had this Peridot been obsessing over Chocolate's bluff this whole time? Now she felt kind of bad about lying. 

Even if, with all the rumor-mongering and information theft, it was less that the game itself was a lie and more that Pink Diamond didn't actually know he was playing it.

The Peridot frowned down at her shirt, then looked up at Chocolate hopefully. "Well, yeah, but Yellow Diamond's Court doesn't have y-- doesn't have, uh, the same problems that Pink Diamond's does, since it's been around so long. So I'd be able to, like, help more overall. You know?"

Chocolate  _really_ didn't want some random Peridot hanging around and making sneaking under the radar eight times harder. Still... "What makes you think you'd even be able to help?" she asked a little curiously. Nothing, probably, since from what she could tell this Peridot was just a particularly gullible drone...

"I've been hacking White Diamond's transmissions!" the Peridot said excitedly, and Chocolate nearly dropped Lavender's gem.

"You've  _what,"_ she choked out. The star-haired Peridot grinned.

"Hacking her transmissions!" she bragged. "It's easy, it's just a five-way encryption, and there's this old terminal by the Western Citadel, in the old levels where the Kindergarten techs used to work, where you can plug your limb enhancers in and tap  _right into_ all her files! I gotta use that information chip you had last time-- you know, like, the Era 1 maximum de-encryptor? How'd you get that, by the way, did Pink Diamond give it to you? Usually only really old Peridots get them, like, Era 1 Peridots! I had to steal mine from waste disposal and fix it. It took  _two centuries._ That's, like, forever!"

"It  _is_ a long time," Chocolate agreed faintly. "You  _fixed it,_ you said?" A spark of curiosity. "Could you teach me how to do that? If I-- if I let you help, I mean?"

The Peridot stared up at Chocolate, eyes wide and earnest. "I'd teach you even if you  _didn't_ let me help," she promised. "You're Pink Diamond's Pearl! If she trusts you to do her work for her, you'll be able to learn tech stuff like nothing!"

Oh. That... shouldn't have hit Chocolate as hard as it did. She wouldn't-- she could keep her face smooth, she could... "Thank you," she said again, for lack of anything else to say. "And-- of course, you can help, if you want to. But-- it's dangerous, and a lot of it is stuff Pink Diamond doesn't-- doesn't know about, that keeps her in power and keeps her safe. Especially  _now,_ with the other Diamonds off Homeworld."

Peridot 5RQ nodded and _saluted,_ oh stars, and was she completely ignoring the part where Chocolate had said  _dangerous?_  "Understood, my Pearl!" Eep. "Hey, can I call you 'my Pearl'? Since you're kind of like a commander and all?"

"No!" Chocolate blurted out. Her face felt hot. "No, no, that-- that won't be necessary, my Peridot." Change the subject, change the subject... "Why... have you been doing so much research, anyway? What is it you're trying to find?"

The Peridot's expression went from cheerfully earnest to cheerfully obsessed. "Weeeeell, it's simply really," she started, bouncing a little in excitement. "There are many hidden dealings happening right beneath our feet!"  _You do realize we're having a hidden dealing under gems' feet?_ "Things nobody knows about, not even the Diamonds, that threaten the safety of the Empire! Like the  _secret mammalian underground._ " She paused. "Or maybe they're reptilian. Our current taxonomy system leaves a lot to supposition, when you really think about it, I mean, some mammals lay eggs? And there have been organic species documented before their extinctions as giving live birth and having scales, and yet also being warmblooded! Where do we draw the line? Not to mention the complete lack of biodiversity studies before colonization, I mean, like, how can we prepare to fight our alien foes unless we know exactly how organics work? And what  _is_ blood, really? Does anyone know? Riddle me  _that!"_

The Peridot paused again and composed herself. "But anyway, I've been tapping into White Diamond's transmissions because she's never around, so there's no reason for much of anything directed at her to come to Homeworld, unless it's meant for her Court or the other Diamonds, right? But they're all so  _cryptic,_ it's really good practice decoding them for when I finally discover the underground and prove I'm right to  _everyone_ once and for all!"

"You hacked White Diamond's transmissions for practice," Chocolate echoed, deciding to ignore all the conspiracy theories for the sake of her sanity. "I-- really?"

"How else could I ever meaningfully serve the Empire?" And she was completely serious, too. Oh, stars. At least now Chocolate could add the eldest Diamond's secret messages to the list of things she'd illegally downloaded. And the list of _crimes_  went on and on...

A notification popped up behind Chocolate's eyes, and she frowned to hide her panic. Why would Patuxent River Agate contact her now, instead of meeting her in person? Not that she was ever inclined to be in the same room with her old mistress, if she could help it. "I'm.. being messaged," she said in response to Peridot's questioning stare. "If you could please be quiet, for a moment?" She moved until her back was to the most non-abandoned part of the wall, so it would look like she was in some random part of the palace, just in case it was streaming video somehow, and opened the message. 

Oh. Oh, no.

A frozen moment, and then she met Peridot's eyes and clapped her hands over her mouth before she could even open it, sending Lavender's gem clattering to the floor. An order. An actual stars-damned _order_ , and her Agate had never rescinded owner privileges in her Pearl, had she, so she could still give them even though Chocolate belonged to Pink Diamond. And Chocolate could hardly ask Pink Diamond to contradict it if she was ordered not to speak of it, could she?

Still. She had to focus. There were always ways around these things, weren't there? And she could find one, she knew she could.

 _There_. "Is something wrong?" Peridot asked. "You don't look so good. Is... is it something bad?" Her eyes widened. "Has the underground finally risen up and turned all gems into  _sacs of blood?_ "

What? "No," she tried out, feeling out the limits of what she could and couldn't say, "no, it's not that. It's... in the future, if I ask you to do something but can't tell you why, would you do it?"

"I  _did_ say I'd help, so yeah," the Peridot said. She added hesitantly, "Do you need me to do something now? I totally will. I'll do anything, just say the word!" She looked so eager for orders that Chocolate felt sick. 

"Even if it put you in danger?" she demanded. Nobody was this nice, nobody was this helpful, who was this gem to come waltzing in and demand a role-- "Even if it got you  _shattered?_ Seriously, why are you even here?" Her voice rose. "This isn't a game, not really! You could die from this! Has that even entered into the equation for you? Gems like me-- gems like you, even, we're not made for politics, it's treason just to attempt it!"

"It can't be treason, it's helping a _Diamond_!" the Peridot insisted. Her expression morphed into something more serious. "And anyway, I've been hacking a bunch of stuff and doing research and, like, everything, and it's gotten me nowhere, and that's already not allowed. But you-- you just walked right into Blue Diamond's chambers and stole a bunch of information! You're so dedicated to your job as a Diamond's Pearl that you transcended your programming! That can't be treason, not if Pink Diamond says it's okay--"

"Pink Diamond doesn't _know_!" Chocolate clenched her fists. "He's not the same as he was before the rebellion, he's a completely different person and he'll have to relearn politics, relearn how Homeworld works, how  _everything_ works-- I was assigned to him for paperwork, but he's too nice, too naive, if I just do my job and nothing else it'll all fall to pieces. I  _have_ to do more. I'm not losing the one good owner I've ever had!" 

"So you were lying about the game, then." Peridot's face was perfectly level, and Chocolate froze, going back over what she'd just said. Why couldn't her Agate have ordered her never to speak again? "You didn't have any orders. You  _lied_ to me, and you did everything of your own volition." Her tone was soft. "That's really not something Pearls are supposed to do, is it?"

"Gonna report me, 5RQ?" Chocolate bit out against the sudden terror in her mind. Why had she acted anything more than a Pearl, why had she even _said_ that, getting one bad order shouldn't have been cause to break her entire cover like that,  _such_ an idiot-- Her hands were trembling. A bluff, then. The only weapon she actually had. "I lied, after all, you're right about that. Gonna take me straight to Pink Diamond? Gonna poof me with those weapons on your hands, bring me there in a bubble?" Her voice went vicious. "Because I'll tell you, Peridot, right now, that I'm not going to stop. It'll be your word against mine, and I can be so  _very_ pitiful, and maybe Pink Diamond wouldn't bubble you for the accusation, but you'd definitely be brought to his attention. And I'd keep going, just as I was, and I'd keep _helping_ , and stealing, and sneaking, and if I go renegade  _at least it won't be to kill my Diamond._ So if you're gonna report me, you'd better come up with an  _incredibly_ good story. Because I can guarantee mine'll be better."

"So..." Silence. Chocolate braced herself. "So there  _is_ a conspiracy," the Peridot breathed, and Chocolate stiffened in confusion. Not the response she'd been expecting... "You-- you only sort of lied, there  _is_ a politics game, and you're helping-- that's, like, so amazing!" 5RQ surged forward suddenly and clasped at her hands, starry-eyed. Chocolate was too shocked to pull back. "I've never even heard of a Pearl so loyal!"

"You're not mad?" Chocolate asked in bewilderment. "I just admitted to taking advantage of your beliefs and lying to you. How are you not mad?"

" _Pearl,_ you validated my beliefs!" Peridot said happily. "I uncovered a conspiracy just now, and the conspiracy was  _you!_ And I bet you have a bunch of weird secrets, too, huh, that's  _so_ _interesting!"_ She stared up at Chocolate beseechingly. "You have to let me help you. I want to be part of an underground society too!"

"There's not a society..." Chocolate trailed off, looking down at Lavender's gem. Falling a few feet wouldn't have hurt her, of course, but Chocolate still felt guilty about it. She picked up the gem and brushed the dust off it, cradling it carefully in her hands. That was two gems willing to go along with her schemes, now. Two more allies in an impossible game. And didn't Pink Diamond need all the help he could get? "Well. There isn't  _yet._ " She looked up at the Peridot. "You really want to help Pink Diamond? Even like this?" 

Peridot nodded eagerly. Chocolate took a breath. "Well, then," she said, only starting to believe the Peridot's sincerity, "I guess you'll have to call me Chocolate." 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven has a bad day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For everyone who's been commenting on pretty much every chapter, or on multiple chapters: I really appreciate your input, and please never stop.
> 
> Also, thanks for leaving kudos and comments in general-- they really do make my day.
> 
> TW for this chapter can be found in the end notes.
> 
> Edit: I made a couple of changes to fix a continuity error, but it isn't anything that should affect how the plot was going.

Steven found himself barefoot on the beach, facing the surf and wearing swim trunks. He looked around, surprised that he wasn't on Homeworld, and saw a familiar figure running from the town in his direction. "Connie!" he called, waving excitedly. "Hey, Connie! Why are you running?"

Connie Maheswaran slowed and stopped with a flare of sand. She was dressed for school, book bag slung over her shoulder, and her hair was wild like she'd been running for a long time. She took a puff of breath and said, "Steven! Hi! I forgot my homework at your house, it's worth half my grade, I have to get it before my teacher realizes it's missing!"

"You can have homework that's worth half your grade?" That seemed like a lot to Steven. "Are you sure this isn't a dream? It seems kinda weird for you to forget something that important, Connie. You're really responsible."

Connie looked at him thoughtfully, then glanced down at the temple and back up towards Beach City. "A dream," she said. "That  _would_ explain why the Big Donut's floating right now. And why Steven's here instead of stuck on Homeworld."

"It's pretty weird," Steven agreed. If he couldn't see the real Connie, he decided, Dream Connie was a pretty good second. "You wanna go do something fun?"

"If it's a dream, we can go street racing," Connie said with rising excitement. "We could ride dragons, or have a party and invite fictional characters, or anything!" She frowned. "It's almost too many possibilities."

"We could just walk around Beach City," Steven suggested. "I've been feeling kinda homesick lately. It'd be nice to see it again."

Connie brightened. "I have an idea! Let's go down to Pee Dee's food truck. There's something I wanna show you-- or, well, the real you, but I guess this is good practice."

"Yeah, having the real Connie here would make this even better," Steven agreed, and then the penny dropped. "Wait--  _Connie?_ "

"Steven?" She looked more closely at him and said, "Tell me something my subconscious wouldn't know."

"Um." Steven racked his brain. "I guess... Sea Glass's Morganite is one of my advisors now? Also, there's Corruption on one of the colonies and I don't really know what I'm doing."

"I thought Corruption only happened to Earth," Connie said. "And wow, I didn't think your psychic dream stuff could reach this far!"

"I guess we never tested it?" Steven shrugged, grinning. "But that makes everything better! Now we can hang out for real."

Connie nodded. "Right! And I'm gonna take you to see Pee Dee's food truck. Sea Glass-- or Desert Glass and the other Lapis, it depends-- works there now! His business has really expanded now that it's tourist season."

They headed up the beach to the boardwalk. "All sorts of stuff's happened in the past month," Connie told him as they went. "Lars and Sadie started officially dating--"

" _Yes!"_

"-- and Sadie's band got invited to a rock festival, and we fought a whole bunch of Corrupted gems! There was a swarm of little ones and everything, some of them are still hanging around the temple. Lars's crew is settling in pretty well, too! Padparadscha and Garnet have been hanging out sometimes, and the Rutile Twins have been learning to fight so they can join us on missions. It's a lot easier to get stuff done when we have this many gems." Connie grinned and imagined herself a sword, swung it around in an expert flick of her wrist. "I've been getting better at fighting, too."

"That's a lot," Steven said, caught somewhere between envy and wistful longing. "I wish I'd seen it."

"Yeah, well, what you're doing is more important, right?" Connie turned to him and clasped his hands between her own. "You're ruling a whole  _space empire!_ And the Diamonds have just disappeared? That's way more interesting than what we're doing!"

"It's not very fun, though," Steven said with a grimace. "Everyone thinks they're better than everyone else, and I have to be really careful not to offend too many people."

Connie gave a world-weary shrug. "That's politics." Her eyes brightened. "I really wish I'd been there with you for everything. I really think I could have helped! Tell me what's been going on?"

"It's such a long story, I don't think I could tell you everything now," Steven said regretfully. He picked up a rock and turned it into a mini-Dogcopter; it buzzed around their heads, shooting little lasers at their faces, then exploded into a rain of sparkles. He and Connie giggled.

"You'll just have to tell me when you come back for another visit," Connie said firmly. "You need supplies soon, don't you? It's been weeks!"

Steven nodded in agreement, then stopped and frowned in confusion. "Uh, Connie? I thought you said we were going to Beach City."

"We are," she said, equally confused. The area ahead of them was a forest filled with jagged orange leaves, and the sky above them shifted from light blue to a black night sky. "Or we should be. Maybe we should turn back?"

A flickering orange light lit between the trees like a jack-o'-lantern. Steven felt a hint of foreboding, but-- "I think we should go explore." He turned back to Connie and asked, "Wait here?"

"Is it a psychic dream thing? Steven, I'm not staying behind if it's something dangerous!"

Steven reached the edge of the forest and reached out with one hand. Where the boundaries of forest and beach met, his hand morphed from having fingers to having claws. "Whoa," he breathed. "Hey, Connie--"

" _Steven watch out!"_ A dark shape hit him from the side and sent him tumbling along the border. He scrambled to his feet, shield at the ready, to face a faceless, indistinct figure. There was a purple gem on her shoulder; her face was shrouded in shadows. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Connie lunge with her sword--

\-- and the figure melted back into the forest. A figment of a dream, Steven realized, like the evil wedding Connie. But his momentum had him moving forward, caught in tandem with Connie's attack, and before he knew it his feet had crossed the threshold.

_And then_

_there was_

_nothing._

*

Steven opened his eyes to a night sky filled with unfamiliar stars.The strange body he found himself in was muzzy and unclear to his eyes, but some dream-like muscle memory made it feel as natural as his own. Whatever he was, though, his heart was racing like he'd been running a marathon, and his mind was rapidly filling with fear. He told himself it was just a dream, but as he stared up at the sky his own thoughts-- his own mind-- drifted away.

And then, paralyzed with fear, he was only a stranger, trapped on his home planet and hiding for his life. 

Blue blood splattered on the ground, a few feet from where he'd tucked himself wings and all under a bushy tree, shifting his colors to match the dull orange underbrush. His wings were wrapped tight around him, a baby reflex for camouflage that he thought he'd outgrown; somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that he was a juvenile, and that his ruff had barely grown its adult colors a few months ago, and that he was meant to start an apprenticeship last week.

He knew that his hatchmates were already dead, and a low cry built up in his throat. He was staring at the stars so he could pray-- so he could keep himself quiet and distract himself from the low grumbling and raucous sounds coming from behind him. 

_Laughter, it was laughter, such familiar voices--_

There had been an attack, he knew. The guardians, every female and in-between in the nest, had said they would regain the lost ground, would drive the rock invaders from their old nesting cliffs and send the clinging towers crashing to the dirt below. Whatever these monstrous creatures wanted from their nests, to create more of their own kind like a spreading sickness-- well. They would not get it.

And they were dead, dead, every one of them was dead, because to attack the invaders was to make yourself a threat, and they had learned that the only way to keep them from regrowing was to break them apart but once one was dead the rest would converge, like hive insects upon a predator--

_An army has a use, they can go and fight a war-- and this was what Yellow had meant, wasn't it, because there hadn't been rebellions before the Crystal Gems, just colonies and the ones who already lived in them--_

A shadow, spreading out in front of him; the crackle of flames, shot from the body of those little red fighters that could combine to become larger beasts, eradicating the nest and the nestlings and everyone like they were just knocking down a stinging hive. One of the invaders was behind him. One of the large ones, a guardian of the invaders' toxic nest. He tried to stay as still as possible.

There was a spear a few feet away from where he hid; it was a tool, mostly, used for carving out nest spaces and for forgecraft, but it was strong enough to shatter stone. One of its kind had destroyed two invaders, before its wielder had been struck down. If he reached out, if he caught the spear, if he turned and made himself lithe, brought all his strength from forging to bear--

No. No, no, he couldn't, if he made himself a threat they would kill him for sure. If he didn't hold a weapon, maybe they wouldn't kill him. If he wasn't a threat, if he was quiet, if he cooperated, maybe they would let him fly away. Maybe he could warn the farther nests of the invaders who killed the land, who slaughtered hatchlings in their nests. Maybe he could live through this. 

Maybe--

The tall invader was in front of him, staring down at him with an unreadable-- _baffled, regretful--_  expression. He shrank back, glancing at the spear, out of reach, then back at it, transfixed by its alien features. How could a creature like that survive? How could it build a nest, escape from predators, if it didn't even have wings? How could it show its emotions without a ruff to raise and bristle? How could it speak without changing colors to go along with its grumblings? It was unfathomable-- a living nightmare. 

The invader said something unintelligible ( _hey, little guy_ ) and kneeled down to meet his eyes. He cowered, flattening his ruff to show surrender and flushing pink.   _I really don't wanna do this. You're not a fighter, right? You're like a Pearl, or something. What are you doing so close to a battle?_

The invader glanced around like it was looking for predators.  _Look,_ _how about you just fly away? If you go fast enough maybe they won't catch you. It's not treason if you're not a fighter, right? You won't shatter anyone. And here, look._ It reached into its coverings and pulled out a tiny, pristine egg. He froze, staring in horror. Taken away from the nest-- what, did it want him to kill it, to show surrender? That was-- that was an ancient tradition, they didn't do that anymore, that was terrible--

The egg was laid on the ground, and he crept forward, determined not to surrender if it took the death of a near-hatched egg to do it, and scooped the egg against his chest, placed it into his nurse-pouch as carefully as he could manage. The invader stepped back. He stiffened in confusion.  _Go on, get out of here. She was pleading. Please, come on, get out before someone sees!_

Was it... letting him go? Him and the egg? He bristled in confusion, moved forward a few paces, spread his wings. The invader didn't move. He sprang into the air, morphed his colors starry-black to match the night sky, and it only stood and watched. 

He fled, and nothing attacked him. Below him, he saw nests burning, corpses smoldering in the ashes of the eggs they'd been trying to protect, other alien invaders snapping necks and burning dwellings methodically, easily, like it was just forgecraft, just another job. He cried out without meaning to. 

One of the combined red ones looked up at the cry (no, no, please get away, please, Ruby no) and stared, raising an burning appendage. A burst of fire shot out at him, and he tried to dodge, tried to outfly it, but it scorched his wing and he screamed, he lost altitude, he--

 _"Steven!"_ _That was Connie's voice, and she sounded absolutely terrified. Steven tried to turn to her, tried to make himself remember-- "Steven, you have to wake up! It's just a dream, Steven, wake_ up!"

Steven jolted awake with a scream of pain, thrashing to try to escape a fire that wasn't there. One of his guards ran in-- an Amethyst, and  _her gem was on her shoulder--_

Steven threw his shield at her. She jerked back, barely dodging, and he threw it again, corpses and flames and screaming aliens running through his head, that little egg pristine and probably burned-up and broken, that little alien probably  _dead--_

"My Diamond!" the Amethyst babbled, raising her hands in a fearful salute and backing up towards the wall. " _Steven,_ it's me, it was just a dream, you don't have to fight--" 8XJ. She was-- she was 8XJ, from the Human Zoo, who'd comforted her charges after they'd suffered their first heartbreaks-- 

"Where were you assigned?" he blurted out, terror morphing to rage, fires burning behind his eyes-- "Where-- before the Zoo, where were you, Jay? Tell me where you were!"

"I-I-- I was on Earth, under your-- Pink Diamond's command! That's all I ever was before the Zoo, I promise!" 

Right. Right, she was-- they were young, defective, and all of Amethyst's cohort was nice... Oh. Oh, no. Steven dissipated his shield, horrified with himself, and started to cry. 

"Steven?" 8XJ sounded tentative, and that made everything about a thousand times worse. Steven backed away when she got close, residual fear winning over conscious intent, and she stopped moving. Her eyes were wide with fear, but whether for him or herself, Steven couldn't tell.

"I'm sorry," he choked out. "I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have _attacked_ you, you haven't done anything wrong." Except work for the Empire, and weren't they all wrong, then? A civilization built on millions of deaths, most of them not even their own... He couldn't think about it. He didn't  _want_ to think about it. How was he supposed to fix this? How could _anyone_?

"It's okay, you didn't even poof me," 8XJ reassured him. "You just beat up the wall. And it was just a nightmare, right? A weird dream? You're okay now."

"That's the thing," Steven said miserably. "I don't think it really  _was_ a dream." Connie, at least, had been anything but fake.

The door slid open again, and Amethyst crashed in. "Hey, I just got back, what's-- whoa, okay, that's not good." She came forward-- Steven didn't flinch-- and hugged Steven. "Hey, what's wrong, dude, did you have another nightmare? What's with the water works?"

Steven clutched at Amethyst's back and buried his face in her shoulder. She wasn't tall, she didn't loom over him, she was short and solid and goofy and  _Amethyst_ , she'd been formed on Earth after the Rebellion and she'd never hurt someone who didn't deserve it, she modeled for Vidalia and played video games and  _oh, he wanted to go home._ "Nightmare," Steven forced out. "Or-- or a vision. I don't. I don't know."

"Not good?" Steven shook his head. Amethyst rubbed his back. "Don't wanna go back to sleep?"

"I don't think I can," he said quietly. "Can you-- can you guys stay, for a little while? Just until I get back to sleep?"

"Of course, dude," Amethyst said, and 8XJ nodded in agreement. "And hey, we need to go back to Earth soon anyway, don't we? Why don't-- why don't you go after today. Get a little taste of home, right?"

"Yeah," Steven agreed, wiping his eyes. He felt ridiculously safe, now that Amethyst was here beside him. "Yeah. I think that's a good idea."

 *

Steven strummed his ukulele, frowned, and adjusted two of the strings. Homeworld was a lot less humid that Beach City-- apparently, it had been messing with his ukulele's tuning. He hoped he wouldn't have to replace it. He'd never say it out loud, since he still liked MC Bear Bear and his other toys a lot, but his ukulele was one of his favorite belongings. Chocolate Pearl watched him tune with a curious glint in her eyes. She was the only member of his Court (and that was weird, thinking that, but he guessed that was the actual term) present; Morganite was off running errands.

"It's called an ukulele," Steven explained, holding the instrument out to her. She backed up a little, startled, then crept forward and held a hand out over the strings.

"May I touch it, my Diamond?" Steven nodded, and Chocolate put on a look of concentration, reaching out and strumming all the open strings. She widened her eyes at the sound. "Oh. That's... nice."

"It's a pretty fun instrument," Steven agreed with a laugh. He'd brought it out from all his Earth supplies because Amethyst had said he should relax a little, after his nightmare. He wasn't sure how he felt about relaxing, since he was responsible for a whole empire right now, but the feeling of the ukulele in his hands calmed him. It reminded him of staying over at his dad's van for jam sessions, and of snuggling in his sleeping bag on the van's roof while he watched the stars. The contrast between Beach City and the elite, sterile towers of Homeworld made him ache with homesickness. "You wanna try playing it?"

Chocolate eyed the ukulele nervously. "Do you want me to, my Diamond?"

"It's okay if you don't want to," Steven reassured her. He pulled the ukulele back to his chest and played a few chords, getting a feel for the song he was thinking of. "I thought I'd bring it out to try and think of more stuff for the jubilee. Music's always fun to play in parties at home."

Chocolate asked, "Are there a lot of... instruments, on Earth, my Diamond?"

"A ton!" Steven enthused. "There's ukulele, and my friend Connie plays violin, and my dad plays guitar, that's like a big ukulele with no strings, and then there's brass and woodwinds and percussion..." He saw his advisor's blank expression and said sheepishly, "They're all really fun to play. So, I thought maybe we could include them in the jubilee somehow. I'm sure my dad could scrounge up a few, and I think gems could learn them pretty fast." Ruby had learned guitar in literally ten minutes, after all. Maybe it was a gem thing.

Amethyst called from her station by the door, "I call maracas!" and Steven gave her a thumbs up. He thought he heard Skinny Jasper ask what maracas were a second later, minus her usual sarcasm, and suppressed a grin. He had to admit, he had an ulterior motive in wanting to bring instruments to Homeworld-- one that wasn't about spreading the joy of music across the universe like his dad always wanted. If he had to get a bunch of instruments, he had an excuse to go home _himself,_ not just send someone for supplies. And he really, really wanted to go home.

A memory struck him, and he asked Chocolate, "Can you sing in key? Like, are you able to?"

She blinked. "I... don't know what that means." Her eyes widened and she added hurriedly, "My Diamond. Perhaps-- do you want me to sing?"

"No, no!" Steven made a placating gesture. "I'm... hmmm. I guess what I'm asking is, if you hear a note or a tone, like if someone sings it, can you sing the same note? Like-- do re mi fa so la ti do! Like that."

Chocolate frowned in thought. "Do, re, mi... yeah, I guess I can."

"Okay!" Steven strummed a few chords, trying to recall how the song had gone, back when Peridot was still more of a reluctant former enemy than a friend, and sang, "Life and death and love and birth, and peace, and war, on the planet Earth. Can you do that?"

Chocolate copied him, her clear voice rising and falling smooth as silk, and Steven smiled in delight. "Yeah, see? That's how an instrument helps with music. It's kinda like  _it_ can sing, or you can sing with it. Either way, it adds something new."

"It certainly does that, my Diamond," Chocolate murmured. Her eyes went blank for a moment, then, and she shook herself and said, "My Diamond, you've got a transmission coming in."

"Oh." Steven pushed away his disappointment. "I guess I'd better answer it." He saw Amethyst and Skinny Jasper talking to a few gems at the door-- they looked like the two Zircons from his trial, and maybe that Citrine he'd reassigned to tech work-- and called, "I gotta take a call really fast, sorry!"

Amethyst cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted back, "No problem, dude!" Skinny Jasper grimaced.

The holographic screen popped up in front of Steven, and he tapped a hand against its surface to answer it. The silhouette of a Hessonite appeared, closely followed by a clear view of her face. Her orange eyes were dark with rage. Steven had to suppress a flinch. "My Diamond," she said with a quick salute, "I apologize for bothering you at this time. However, your recent decree as to the treatment of misbehaving and substandard gems requires administrators to submit applications for trials to you, yes? As the only way a gem may be shattered." Steven didn't actually remember saying any details like that, but he guessed that maybe, just maybe, they'd been implied. Or something. He wasn't exactly a lawyer.

"Why do you want a gem shattered?" Steven asked cautiously. "Bubbling could get her out of your way just as easily, couldn't it?"

"If I bubbled her, she would be released by her squadron," the Hessonite said, "and they would attempt to hide her among their number. My Diamond, I am not interested in trawling through three hundred Rubies in order to locate one errant gem. And if she is shattered, it would be a good example to the others of her number that  _disobedience will not be tolerated."_

Steven gulped. "Right," he said shakily. "But why-- what's she been disobeying you in?"

"Does it _matter_?" the Hessonite demanded. Steven nodded firmly, and she sighed. "Very well, then, my Diamond. She's been sabotaging colonization efforts, to the point that she's led other worker gems in their insubordination. She's hardly another Rose Quartz-- begging your pardon, my Diamond-- but she's causing a lot of problems. And she's giving all the lesser gems ideas-- making them question things above their station."

Ugh. Steven felt dirty just listening to all the "lesser gem" stuff without speaking up. But he had to be cool and collected, like Garnet... "And... how's she been sabotaging things?"

The Hessonite scowled. "She's been deliberately freeing the organics and has been helping them ruin our efforts to colonize this planet. We only just discovered that they exist-- it's in the records now, of course-- but it seems that their cognitive abilities were deliberately hidden from us by the inferior gems who made direct contact with them. She's been helping them fight _other gems._ And every time we try to do some pest control she manages to let some of them escape-- with her platoon's assistance."

Steven froze. "Helping them fight," he echoed.  _Screaming, burning, and everyone was dead, what a coward he was, the giant Ruby raising her burning palms--_ Irrational fear leaped into his throat. "Are-- are the organics sapient?" Morganite had said there weren't any colonies with sapient species, but if they'd only just been discovered, been reported-- how many had died without Homeworld even bothering to record them? How many thousands of races had been exterminated, over the millennia? Planet-wide cleansing was a horror too massive to hold in his mind. 

The imperial administrator stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language. "What does that matter? My Diamond, they're only native organics. They're pests, nothing more. They're in the way."

Steven clenched his fists. Calm, calm, he had to be calm-- "Tell me, Hessonite. Are they sapient?" In the corner of his eye he saw Chocolate stiffen. Was something wrong? Why was she--

"Yes, my Diamond, they seem to be sapient. It's what makes them so hard to exterminate. We haven't encountered a sapient species on a new colony for _millennia,_ so our old methods had to be dug up again." The Hessonite sounded almost long-suffering, like she thought Steven was dumb. But she was talking about people like they were things. Like they were things, like they couldn't feel pain, like they didn't mean anything at all, like they didn't sing songs and play and have  _dreams--_

 His voice sounded like it was coming from a long way off. "Do they have a language?"

"My Diamond?" Polite confusion, with more than a hint of disdain. 

"Do they have a language, Hessonite?" 

"I wouldn't know--"

"Do their children play games?" Steven demanded. Nausea burned at the back of his throat.

" _What_ \-- who cares, we exterminated most of their hives back at the beginning--"  _All those ruined eggshells--_

"Tell me, Hessonite!" Steven snarled. "They're sapient, right? So they think and feel and learn, and you don't know  _anything_ about them? What stories do they tell? What's their society like? What are their  _names?"_

"I don't understand why that matters!" the Hessonite blurted out. Steven's eyes burned, and he saw her flinch back from the screen. He felt like he could cry with rage. 

"Because they're  _people!"_ he shouted. "They're people, and you're murdering them without even knowing their  _names!_  Can't you see that? _"_ He took a deep breath, then another. "You're not-- you're gonna send that Ruby, and her platoon, to Homeworld. They won't bother you again. And you won't kill any other organics on that planet. Not a _single_ one."

"But, my Diamond--" the Hessonite protested. "That's impossible, how are we supposed to terraform? Our actions are directly sanctioned by Yellow Diamond, you know. You can't-- with all due respect, of course-- you can't rescind another Diamond's order."

"No, I can't," Steven admitted, filled with impotent frustration, "But I can make it so--" He had to force out the words-- "So you don't have a job anymore, if you keep doing this. If you keep killing  _sapient organics._ I'm not telling you to stop. I'm just telling you there's gonna be trouble if you keep going. Okay?"

The Hessonite stared; Steven caught more than a hint of anger in her eyes. "Yes, my Diamond," she gritted out. "Of course."

"Thank you." Steven felt sick. "That-- that will be all." He closed the call and glared at the ground.

"Steven?" Amethyst's voice cut through his thoughts. "You okay there, buddy?"

"Yeah," he told her, casting an apologetic glance at the other gems clustered around the entrance. Blue Zircon looked shocked, and he wondered how much of that call she'd heard. Then, in a rare swelling of anger, he decided that he didn't care. "I'm gonna take a break for a little while, okay? I'll talk to you guys when I get back."

"But, my Diamond--"

"Nope, sorry, gotta go!"

Steven dodged past the gems at the entrance, pushing past Blue Zircon's shocked exclamation and Amethyst's concerned expression. He remembered the hallways he'd sneaked down when he'd seen Desert Glass and the Lapis Lazuli in their cells. If what that warden Morganite had said was true, those cells should be pretty much empty. Steven hardly ever wanted to be alone, but right then he felt like he'd rather brood on his thoughts than wait them out. His stomach was roiling with horrified disgust.

If Mom had been a Rose Quartz for real, he would have been happy with his powers. 6OP had told him that they could only heal minor cracks, nothing serious or really debilitating, and that Pink Diamond's (Rose Quartz's) abilities had been considered a rumor, a fluke. He would have been happy with that. Happy with a shield, happy with shapeshifting, happy with strength. But a Diamond's power was so much greater, and it came with so much responsibility...

He was only in charge of Homeworld because his mom was a Diamond, and because only a Diamond could rule. But even a Diamond had limits, and Steven didn't know how to get beyond them. He had a feeling he'd just made a huge mistake, yelling at someone for something that gems had been raised to think was right. A better leader-- not even necessarily a Diamond-- would have handled that better-- would have made a friend instead of an enemy. 

How could he make a good Diamond if he didn't even know the basics of politics? Gems would only accept a Diamond to lead, but Steven was the only Diamond he knew who cared about organic life at all. Was this how Mom had felt, yelling and yelling and always getting brushed off? He wouldn't be able to make this another bubble decree. Outside of his Court, outside of the gems under his command, he didn't have much influence at all. Telling every gem in the Empire to stop doing the things they were made for-- to stop colonizing, to stop killing, to stop destroying-- would only make him lose every bit of power he had left.

Steven didn't know what to do. He sneaked into the empty cell block and slid down against the wall, sighing deeply. At least he had his ukulele.

The door slid open a few minutes later, and a slender brown form peeked in. "Oh!" Chocolate said. "I thought I heard music here, my Diamond." She paused, then added, "Is everything all right?"

"Everything's fine," Steven told her. He set his ukulele aside. "I'm just a little tired, that's all."

"Is that why there are darker areas beneath your eyes?" the Pearl asked curiously. She flushed. "Not that I mean any disrespect, of course, my Diamond."

"Steven," he corrected. "You can call me Steven.  _Please._ "

"Steven," Chocolate echoed. She didn't look convinced. 

Steven bit his lip. "I messed up, didn't I. When I yelled at that Hessonite."

Chocolate grimaced. "You did," she confirmed. "If-- if you don't mind my saying so. Any uncertainty as to your sympathies is pretty much shot at this point. Everyone in the Empire's gonna know you don't agree with the other Diamonds' policies, and that's going to lead to trouble." 

"I guess I can't pretend I'm a proper Diamond any more, can I?" he asked, then made a frustrated sound. "I just don't know what to do! What's the point of being in charge if I can't stop all the bad stuff everyone does? Even if I order everyone not to hurt everyone else anymore, things will just go worse and worse."

"Does that work on Earth?" Chocolate asked. Steven blinked up at her. "Telling people to change their minds, I mean. My-- Steven. Does it work on Earth, on humans?"

Steven thought back to how he'd tried to convince Lars to tell Sadie how he felt, and to how he'd tried to get Garnet to respond to Jamie's love letters. And to his attempts at getting people to go to his dad for guitar lessons, and to how he hadn't been able to earn Connie's forgiveness for turning himself in just by apologizing... Oh. "No," he said. "I don't... think it ever does."

"Then why should it work with gems?" At Steven's inquiring glance, Chocolate faltered, then continued bravely: "The way you're doing things now, you'll never make any lasting change. Too many outright shifts from the status quo will lead to discontent, and likely some degree of rebellion. You've got to be subtler. If gems' opinions as a group shift, individual holdouts will be few and far between. You've got to make it seem like any changes are logical-- that any changes are their idea, not yours. Then they'll all agree with you like they'd agree with their own opinions."

"But how would I even do that?" Steven asked, despairing. "Gems won't listen to me if I tell them to do stuff. What's the other option?"

Chocolate paused, then said hesitantly, "You don't tell them to do anything. You  _show_ them, and you control what you show, and you manipulate your own appearances." Steven stared at her blankly, and she continued, "For instance, um... if you wanted gems to look more favorably on organic life. You could grow gardens all over the palace, using beautiful flowers and foliage, and you could make the organic more familiar-- an aspect of home. You could make it a resource itself. Then gems might not be so eager to call for its removal."

"Oh." Steven blinked. "That's...  _really_ smart, Chocolate. Do you think that could actually work?" 

The Pearl went dark-cheeked. "It's only common sense, my-- Steven. Nothing more. And yes, I think it could. And I'm sure Morganite, and other members of your Court, could come up with similar ideas."

"But it sounds like you put a lot of thought into this. Do you think about this stuff a lot?" Chocolate stiffened, then relaxed. Steven felt guilty. "It's okay, you don't have to answer."

"N-no, it's fine," Chocolate insisted. "I just... spend a lot of time thinking, when I'm just supposed to be standing around and looking nice. And I've been among Homeworld's courts for nearly all of my existence."

"So this is your home," Steven said. "Homeworld, I mean. It's where you've always been."

"Well, no," Chocolate said hesitantly. "I was on Earth for a little while, too, back during the Gem War. My first mistress was shattered there." 

"O-oh. I'm... sorry about that."

Chocolate smiled, but her eyes were unreadable. "Don't worry about it. It was a long time ago."

Another pang of homesickness. "I want to go back to Earth," Steven admitted. "I think I'll go on a visit tomorrow. Do you think it's okay if I stay a couple nights?" Silence. "Chocolate?"

Chocolate had frozen up, hands shaking, as soon as he said the word 'Earth.' Steven felt a flare of panic. "Chocolate? Are you okay? Snap out of it!"

She unfroze all at once, blinking like she was trying to get rid of spots in her eyes. "My Diamond," she greeted, then winced. "Steven. I'm sorry about that. It won't happen again." Her knuckles were white where she clutched at her skirt like a security blanket.  

"What happened?" Was her gem damaged? Had the mention of visiting Earth scared her? Maybe she didn't want him to get killed, either-- no, that didn't make sense, she knew he was from Earth. Maybe she just didn't like to think about it?

"Just... bad memories, Steven," Chocolate said. It made sense, but somehow Steven felt like he was missing something. "You're... going to visit Earth, soon? You and Amethyst 8XM?"

"Yeah. I think I need a break," Steven said sheepishly. "If I can't be gone that long, though--"

"I'm sure a few days will be fine," Chocolate blurted out over him. "You-- you're right, you need a rest. The Empire can last less than a cycle without you." She was clutching her skirt tight enough to tear it. 

"Okay," Steven said. He looked over Chocolate, concerned. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Fine," the Pearl said with a strained smile. "I'm just fine. _My Diamond_."

*

"You don't have any meetings for the next few days," Morganite was informing Pink Diamond-- informing  _Steven._ "We'll be telling gems that you're contemplating your next course of action. Blue Diamond has used that excuse before, so rest assured that we may do the same."

Of course, Blue Diamond had been understood by her Court to be in deep mourning. Chocolate wasn't sure Steven could use the same excuse. Now was a terrible time to leave; Patuxent River Agate would surely take advantage of Steven's outburst, and a Homeworld without Diamonds was a Homeworld without any way to restore order, if her Agate decided to make any overt moves. It was too bad that Chocolate couldn't make her concerns pass her lips.

 _Spy on her_ had been such a vague order. It meant Chocolate could be selective with what she heard and what she tuned out, with what she reported and what she kept to herself. There were no failsafes to keep her from lying, or embellishing, or twisting her words. No assurances to Patuxent River Agate that her Pearl wasn't having her on except for her own threats of blackmail. 

 _This_ order had been much more binding.  _If Pink Diamond expresses a wish to return to Earth, you will not warn her against it. You will assist her, and any allies who wish to accompany her, to the warp pad, and you will see her off. You will encourage her to leave. And once she does leave, you will use every skill at your disposal-- and don't think I don't know how dishonest you are, Pearl-- and you will allow the Peridot I've sent to disable the warp pad to do her job. And you will not attempt to fix the warp pad yourself, or to speak of how it's been disabled to anyone. And you will not keep any gems I send to Earth myself from re-enabling the warp pad and departing. Do you understand?_

_Yes._

_Then that will be all._ Chocolate suppressed a shudder.

Steven thanked her, then turned to look at Chocolate. "Oh! I forgot to ask, is your friend okay?" Behind him, the Amethyst he favored was joking and talking with her cohort. 

"My... friend?" Chocolate asked, caught up in trying to find a loophole in her orders. Her Diamond's guileless trust made guilt twist in her belly. She'd have to try harder-- if he were stranded on Earth, if Homeworld was left with only the aristocrats, spoiled on constant obedience, to rule... She didn't want to think about it. Without the worship that gems had for their matriarchs to keep everything in line, rebellions would be much more likely. And rebellions, as exciting as they were, had never in the long term worked out in Chocolate's favor.

Steven nodded. "Lavender Pearl, right? She got poofed during dance practice a couple of days ago, didn't she? Amethyst said she'd given her to you."

Well, Peridot had actually done that, but the main point was still true. "She's taking longer to reform than I thought she would," Chocolate admitted, "but she's unharmed, my-- Steven." Stars, it was hard getting used to that new mode of address. Too bad continuing to call him her Diamond against his wishes had made her feel even worse.

"Glad to hear it," her Diamond said. Chocolate forced a smile. "We'll be back in a few days, okay? So I'll see you guys then."

"We'll try to keep the Empire in working order until then," Morganite promised him, and in a burst of white light he was gone. 

Morganite watched the empty warp pad for a moment, then turned to Chocolate and asked quietly, "Have you gotten any more transmissions from that Sapphire, Chocolate Pearl?"

Chocolate frowned. "That... Sapphire, my Morganite?" She didn't remember seeing any Sapphires in Pink Diamond's court. Maybe she meant the one who ran the courier Pearls?

The former administrator's face was heavy with concern. "You remember," she said. "The hysterical one who called Pink Diamond some time ago."

Oh! Her. Chocolate said honestly, "Not that I'm aware of."

"Hmmm." Morganite looked pensive. "You'll inform me, if you do?" Her hand, Chocolate noticed, was fidgeting like it wanted a weapon. Chocolate fought the urge to back up a few steps.

"I'd have no reason to keep it to myself," Chocolate said instead, increasingly confused. "My Morganite, is something wrong?"  _Aside from my being forced to betray my Diamond by a narcissistic fool with delusions of grandeur?_ _Apart from possible impending trouble from Homeworld aristocrats? Because really, a third problem would just make. My. Day._

"No, no," Morganite said. "Nothing's _wrong,_ per se. I've just got a bit of a bad feeling about something." She shook her head like she could shake off her thoughts. "There's no need to pay it any mind." She glanced back at Chocolate. "I'll see you later today to receive your report." Then she walked away, probably to deal with the transmissions from some colony's recent difficulties, and Chocolate was left by the warp pad.

Dread pooled in her stomach. If Morganite had stayed a little longer, she thought, she might have noticed the gem in the shadows, waiting for her to leave.  _Chocolate_ had noticed as soon as she entered the room. After all, she'd known that she would be there.

Her hands were steady, though her body ached to move. Chocolate stepped back and bowed to the gem behind the hologram. "My Peridot," she said evenly. 

"You're Patuxent River Agate's Pearl, aren't you?" the Era 1 Peridot asked archly. "The one she gave to Pink Diamond. She didn't relinquish her right to give you orders?"

"Pink Diamond didn't distrust her enough to think it necessary, my Peridot." Or rather, she realized now, it hadn't been a naive expression of trust at all but a lack of understanding of how Pearls  _worked._ If Chocolate had been given to Yellow Diamond for some reason, the matriarch would have made sure that Chocolate could answer to nobody but her. How isolated had Pink Diamond been, on Earth, that he hadn't known such a basic fact? Surely the remaining Crystal Gems would have taught him something of his home?

"More proof, then," the Peridot said, almost like she was talking to herself. As a walking, talking decoration, Chocolate was familiar with her tone. "I'm sure you've been told not to speak of this to anyone?"

"Yes, my Peridot."

"Good," she said. "Then you're not needed here any longer. After all, it's not as if you have the know-how to disable a warp pad in an undetectable manner." She clapped in dismissal, and Chocolate kept her face neutral, kept her eyes wide and Pearlish. No anger, no hatred, no fear. She only bowed and left the room, and wondered how exactly Patuxent River Agate thought she was going to keep Steven on Earth when he'd have all his allies' help to return to Homeworld.

She didn't like the ideas she came up with. 

Down a service corridor, around a corner and hopefully out of sight, Chocolate dropped her bearing and fought the useless urge to punch a wall. This would cause _so many_  problems if it wasn't dealt with, and she couldn't even tell  _Morganite_ about it-- how widespread were the rumors of Pink Diamond being an impostor? He obviously wasn't, given his abilities (and given the split second earlier, when he'd been angry at that Hessonite and his eyes had flared pink, which he hadn't seemed to notice), but how many gems were gullible enough to believe it?

He seemed popular with inferior gems, but it was the elites who could cause the most trouble-- how could they turn the tide? If Lavender were here, Chocolate could bounce ideas off her, could see which were reasonable and which were likely to get her harvested for real. Lavender would be tranquil, and giggly, and would calm the restless anger that always rose up when Chocolate could speak freely. Except she couldn't speak freely, could she-- not with her orders in place.

Except, Chocolate remembered, Lavender wasn't the only gem privy to Chocolate's secrets. Not since a few days ago, at least. And Chocolate barely knew Peridot 5RQ, but she had a feeling that as long as her problems were interesting, Peridot wouldn't report her. But how to phrase things so Peridot would know not to ask questions...?

 _Meet me as soon as you're able,_ Chocolate sent through a secure channel, and she sent the coordinates to her location after it.  _I may need your help with something._

She would have typed more, but she was interrupted by a voice behind her. "Pearl," it said, and a weight slammed into her from behind, hands pressing a cool blade to her throat. Chocolate struggled, but she couldn't get out of the other gem's grip. Panic fluttered in her chest.

"You have two options," the voice said. There was an undercurrent of frantic rage beneath its words. "Option the first: you can agree to tell me everything you know about the betrayal you just committed, and then you can help us stop it. Or, option the second! We shatter you here and move on to your co-conspirators." Her attacker's tone went light and vicious. "I'd suggest you choose wisely." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for implied genocide, more violence than usual for this fic, etc.-- basically, the Empire's past, in more gory detail.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven has a good day! Everyone else, not so much.

Chocolate  _panicked._ She'd lived through three mistresses, two of whom had been killed during battles with the Crystal Gems. She'd avoided harvesting, avoided being identified as defective, avoided being poofed or shattered by the rebels when they'd attacked her Agate's base of operations. She didn't mean to freak out, since staying and talking would make her seem a lot more cooperative and a lot less guilty, but there was the blade at her neck and the weight at her back and she just--

_Don't get shattered don't get shattered_

\--shifted her arms smaller before she could think, twisted out of the other gem's grip, threw up dust with her gem and sent a hologram running in the other direction. She  _fled._ She didn't even have a plan other than getting away, maybe getting to Morganite or the Rose Quartzes or Pink Diamond's guards. If she could find somewhere to hide--

A huff behind her told her that her pursuer hadn't fallen for the decoy, and Chocolate tried to wrestle down her terror. Planning was a lot harder when she was in immediate danger, but this was hardly the first irate gem she'd fled from in hopes of finding protection. Even her  _Agate_ would suffice at this point-- she wouldn't want to lose such a useful pawn so quickly.

She ducked into a service hallway, took a shortcut, and doubled back down a flight of stairs, wriggling through a gap in the cracked stone that walled off the upper levels of the old Kindergartens and hitting the ground running. Peridot 5RQ was the only gem she'd ever seen down here besides other Pearls; her attacker probably wouldn't have been able to follow her so easily. Chocolate squeezed into a dark cranny, out of sight of the halls, and pulled out the programming chip that Lavender had smuggled her when she'd first entered Pink Diamond's service. Technically only Peridots and other technician gems got to use the messaging frequencies, and then only for work-related matters, but Chocolate knew they had their own unofficial channels for recreational communication. A screen would cast too much light-- could give her away. 

Chocolate thought to herself, then put in the most likely code to reach 5RQ and sent, _Don't come there's trouble._

 _Chocolate?_ And then:  _Trouble? Can I help?_

_Leaving L gem here (54. 81. 234.) two levels below East c. Pick up when able?_

_Why?_

_Tell you lat--_

A shadow moved against the wall of the hallway, and Chocolate froze. She'd tucked Lavender's gem into a gap in the rubble, but that only made her realize how vulnerable  _she_ was. By hiding, she'd made it so she could be easily cornered. If she were found--

"I know you're here," her attacker's voice rang out. Chocolate kept perfectly still. "I'm sorry I scared you, but I'm afraid this is urgent. There's a reason you were told to get Pink Diamond to the warp pad just then. Every moment you hide is more time for Pink Diamond's enemies to plan."

Chocolate sent out a dim hologram and crept to another hiding place. When the hologram was far enough away, she accessed its voice and said, "You're not very convincing. Why threaten me if you want me on your side?"

The voice was almost amused. "A little pebble told me you're on no side but your own. Did you know there are two separate futures where you betray Pink Diamond for your own gain?"

Where she  _what?_ "I can't imagine how that would happen," she made her hologram say, keeping its voice even. Her hands were fisted white-knuckled in her skirt. "I don't intend to be anything but loyal."

"Would you like to know how it happens?" Chocolate stayed silent, and the voice continued, "In one of them, Pink Diamond is about to be dissipated, and you agree to go back to your former mistress in exchange for not being shattered. In another, you leave Pink Diamond on Earth and accompany your Agate in the coup that would destroy the planet and leave Homeworld leaderless. The second isn't all that likely, but the point  _does_ speak for itself, doesn't it. You're not as loyal as you think you are. You certainly haven't been loyal to your  _last_ mistress. Why would this one be any different?"

"Because it's  _Steven,"_ Chocolate snarled, forgetting herself completely. "He's the nicest owner I've ever had! I wouldn't betray him because I wouldn't have any  _reason_ to betray him! And whatever your visions show you, they can't have the whole story, because I would  _never_ side with my Agate over my Diamond. I'd rather be harvested." She continued to talk, suddenly aware that if she stopped her pursuer would attack for sure. "I don't know how I seem in those visions. I don't know if I seem like a traitor, or a renegade, or just a coward. I get the feeling, from how you're talking, that you don't expect me to be just a Pearl, which means whatever you've seen must be pretty bad. I get the feeling that you think I'm a threat. Tell me, mystery gem, can Sapphires see the past?"

A beat of silence. Chocolate tensed, waiting for a blade through her throat, but after a long moment the voice spoke. "No. Not usually. The past is as much of a mystery to them as the future is to us."

"All right." Chocolate made her tone go soft and quiet and watched for blacker patches in the darkness-- any shadows that might contain someone within them. She was scared out of her mind, but she kept her voice clear.  _Better to be hanged for a Sapphire than a Ruby, right?_  "I'll tell you something, then. I've never stayed with a mistress any longer than I can stand. If I couldn't stand Pink Diamond, I'd find a way out. But I don't want to betray him. I don't think I'll ever want that. Which is strange, really, because I've been dreaming up ways around my superiors' authority since I was almost convinced to join the Crystal Gems." The silence was so complete after her admission that she thought she was about to be shattered. She continued, pushing past the terror in her throat, and blurted out, "I'm a coward. My first instinct is always to run, or to bluff my way out of things, or to freeze. I wouldn't be able to fight if I were given a spear and _ordered_ to. But I'm still Pink Diamond's Pearl. As long as I'm his, I'll serve him to the best of my ability. It wouldn't help me at all if he were deposed or killed. Even if it would... I wouldn't go along with it. This is-- for me, this is the end of the line."

It was true, she realized. Serving Pink Diamond well for security had turned to serving him for his sake. She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

An armed silhouette appeared at the entrance to Chocolate's hiding place, and she flinched back. Her attacker said in a strange tone, "Huh. So that's why my Sapphire warned me not to let you talk. You've got some smooth words in that gem of yours, Pearl." The silhouette's blade dissipated in a flash of light, and Chocolate's attacker sighed. "Too bad I happen to believe you. She'll be _so_ annoyed." She raised her right palm and made her gem glow, and for the first time, Chocolate saw her face.

Her attacker was her height and slender, royal blue with a high, braided ponytail and a smooth, stylish crop-top. In the light from her gem, her face was shadowed and menacing, light-dark contrast splitting her body into angles and pieces. Her  _face,_ though, and the light from her gem--

"You're a Pearl," Chocolate breathed, almost more amazed than she was scared. She'd heard of the Crystal Gems' renegade Pearl, of course, and how she'd fought, cutting through swathes of Homeworld soldiers like it was nothing more strenuous than a dance, but she'd thought her an anomaly.  _This_ Pearl-- vicious, relentless, and apparently pretty reasonable-- was clearly not the renegade. That meant...

Chocolate wasn't sure what that meant. 

The Pearl inclined her head. "A Royal Blue Pearl, to be specific, belonging to Star Sapphire 1AA of the White Court." She raised her hand to shoulder-height, illuminating more of the room and showing the delicate contours of her face. She gave a rueful smile _._ "Sorry 'bout all this fuss. My Sapphire getstouchy whenever she has a major vision. I'm afraid she may have fixated on you as the source of the most likely problems. She hasn't been able to get your Diamond to listen to her, so she sent me instead."

"Star Sapphire 1AA? That's familiar. Did she call Pink Diamond, just after he started to rule Homeworld?" Royal Blue nodded. "She should have fixated on Patuxent River Agate," Chocolate said, climbing to her feet. She left Lavender's gem where it was; she didn't have time to send another message right now, and if 5RQ found it missing she'd only worry more. Anyway, Chocolate wasn't so sure that she was out of danger. " _I'm_ not the one spreading rumors that Pink Diamond is an impostor who somehow managed to fool the Diamonds."

"And the rumors that the other Diamonds have disappeared?" Royal Blue asked, sounding curious. Her top had a stylized white diamond emblazoned in its center.

"Not rumors so much as fact," Chocolate admitted. "Though I'd appreciate if you didn't spread it around."

The warrior Pearl hummed. "Well, I can't say this is how I expected this to go, but the Diamonds  _do_  laugh at the plans of inferiors, as they say. Neither of us is dead, Pink Diamond is out of harm's way, and we have time to plan for whatever it is your Agate intends to do. Will you come with me to meet my Sapphire? I promise I won't try to kill you, and she's not likely to try."

 _She could order you,_ Chocolate thought, but discretion kept her quiet. Instead, she said: "We'll need more than just the three of us if we're going to come up with any sort of consistent plan. Let me fetch Pink Diamond's Morganite advisor, and--" Hadn't one of the Rose Quartz been smart? "--and a few other gems. Then we can talk." It might be safer, that way. She was less likely to be shattered if she was in a group.

"And I take it you'd prefer I keep this conversation to myself?" Royal Blue asked wryly. "I can't imagine they'd take kindly to your admission that you're only loyal to your Diamond by  _choice."_

Chocolate snorted. "I'd rather not imagine that at all. If we could keep this between ourselves, I'd be much obliged."

"So long as you come with me," Royal Blue agreed. She held out a hand to Chocolate Pearl. After a moment, wondering if she were falling into a trap or taking an opportunity, Chocolate took it.

* 

Steven and Amethyst had arrived on Earth to a flurry of hugs and greetings, and also apparently in the middle of a disagreement between Pearl and Garnet over whether or not she should accompany Steven back to Homeworld--  _the other Diamonds aren't there to protect you, things are precarious, my visions say it's not a good idea_ vs  _I'm hardly incapable, Garnet! If he's been having so much trouble, why shouldn't I go back with him?_

_My visions say our presence may prove disastrous to Steven's ability to seem like a good Diamond in the long run!_

_He's been having nightmares! He's been having to deal with_ Homeworld,  _Garnet! What sort of family are we if we leave him alone to do that?_

_"Maybe we should go," Connie had murmured to Steven, and after sharing exasperated looks with Amethyst, the two of them had absconded._

The bickering had been familiar enough to hurt, but Steven didn't truly feel at home until he was out on the beach, wading in the ankle-deep waves while Connie splashed around in the shallows a few feet away. The air smelled like brine and rotting seaweed. Steven kind of wanted to cry.

"Steven?" Connie looked concerned. "Are you okay? If this isn't fun, we can do something else. You're only here a few days this time! We should do what  _you_ want."

"I'm fine," Steven reassured her, wiping his eyes surreptitiously. Ouch, sand in his eye. He tried to blink it out and said, "I just wish I could stay here longer. I don't like being on Homeworld, it's... I can't be myself there. I don't like being so far from my family. And I really miss Earth, too."

Steven's best friend frowned. "Yeah, that doesn't sound fun," she agreed. She concentrated for a moment, then her eyes widened. "Steven! I think I have an idea."

"What is it?" Steven perked up. Connie almost  _always_ had good ideas.

"Well, you're already gonna spend a lot of time with your family, right? Your dad's been staying over at the Temple, we're gonna have a whole cookout later and everything... but if you miss Earth, you're probably missing nature, too. I had an idea a while ago that I wanted to try out, and I think it might be helpful now. You remember when we first met and we got stuck in your bubble, and we thought we'd run out of air before we could get to the surface?"

Steven nodded. His bubbles were awesome, but they couldn't produce oxygen. It was why he hadn't been able to spend too long looking for Malachite, back when Lapis had still been stuck with Jasper on the seafloor. "You think you know a way around that?"

Connie pumped a fist. "Yes! Wait here." She ran up toward the Temple. A few minutes later, she came back with a backpack slung over her shoulder and a small, potted fern. "You have plant powers, right? You told me you grew a bunch of plants on Homeworld." 

Steven took the fern when she offered it and touched one of its fronds. It seemed to perk up under his touch, going brighter and greener like it knew he was there. "If we take the bubble underwater, I bet we could stay under longer if we took a plant with us," Connie explained. "Do you think you could use your powers to make it photosynthesize even without that much sunlight? If you could--"

"We could be like a little terrarium!" Steven looked down at the little plant and smiled. "That's a great idea, Connie. I think we should try it."

"Okay, just let me text my mom." She took out her phone, then looked up. "I can do it now, we don't have anything planned."

Steven's heart felt lighter at the thought of seeing so much nature. Homeworld was sterile and lifeless, so artificial that it hurt him to think of the sea when he was there. The seafloor, with its weird glowy sponges and its clinging seaweed, was about as far from Homeworld's landscape as anything could get. He brought up a bubble around himself and Connie and licked his finger, touching the fern as gently as he could. It perked up and expanded, almost flooding out of the pot, and the air inside the bubble started to smell like the inside of a greenhouse. Steven met Connie's eyes in delight.

They spent the better part of the next few hours going further and further away from the shore, rolling through trenches and going quiet whenever they saw rare fish so they wouldn't scare them away. Connie had brought a flashlight for the darker areas, and a few snacks for the trip, and was annoyed to find that none of her pictures came out, since every one of them was tinged pink. 

After a while, their fern filter started to make the inside of the bubble feel sticky and humid, and they decided to sit down to rest. Steven stuffed a granola bar in his mouth and listened to Connie gush about a Lisa/Archimicarus fanfic that had actually made her start to like the pairing.

"I think because it was set in an alternate universe the pairing seemed a lot better than in canon," she mused. "Archimicarus was her familiar, but he could also shape shift into a human from the start. It made it a lot more believable that he would keep a human form permanently so they could get married."

"How'd they handle the love triangle with the blacksmith's son, though?" Steven asked. "If Archimicarus was always able to turn into a human, wouldn't that mean Lisa wouldn't be interested in the other guy at all? She and Archimicarus were always really close."

Connie frowned and tore off the wrapping of a fruit roll-up. "That was one part of the fanfic I didn't agree with. She still went on a date with the blacksmith's son, but it was only to make Archimicarus jealous. Aside from how out of character that is, I don't think there was any reason for Lisa to do that. She already  _knew_ Archimicarus really liked her. Going out with Dmitri only drove a wedge between them. It added a completely unnecessary conflict.  _I_ didn't do that."

Steven blinked. "Didn't do what?" A fish bumped the outside of the bubble with its tail, then swam off. A couple of crabs poked at one of the rocks that the bubble had overturned.

Connie blushed, and Steven startled a little. "Oh! Um... one of the boys at school asked me on a date a couple of weeks ago, that's all. He's nice and everything, and I like him, but... I said no."

"Why?" Steven asked, confused. He couldn't imagine Connie dating someone from her school who hadn't ever seen her train with Pearl or outline a whole storyline over lunch or attack a Diamond without hesitation, but the thought of Connie turning down someone she liked made his stomach twist. Connie should be happy. Connie should-- she should  _always_ be happy. Being a Crystal Gem and fighting by Steven's side and fusing with him... if it was interfering with her having a normal life, that wasn't good. Connie had been so _lonely_ when he'd first met her. She deserved friends and being liked at school and maybe a boyfriend, too. 

The thought of Connie kissing someone from her school, though, and holding hands with him, and maybe having less time to hang out with Steven because of it--

He didn't know how to feel about that. 

Connie stared at him. "Why? Well, I--" Her cheeks went dark. "It was because-- what would you have done? If a girl you knew had asked you on a date? Would you have said yes?"

Steven's mind went blank. If a girl he knew... like who? The Pizza twins were older, and Sadie was older, and there weren't many other kids he knew in Beach City. He tried to imagine going out with a girl he made up, going to a restaurant together and seeing movies and taking her to meet the Gems, and every scenario he pictured felt uneasy, felt  _wrong_ somehow. The only ones that felt anything like something he'd like were the ones where the other girl looked a lot like Connie. 

"I don't think I would have," he admitted. "Not unless it was you." His face felt hot. Connie's blush deepened.

"Oh," she squeaked. "So, you--"

"Yeah," Steven blurted out. "I really like you, Connie."

Connie looked at him in amazement. Everything about her was tinted pink from the bubble, and ribbons of sunlight filtered down from above ran across her face and lit up the world. Her hand reached out and laid over Steven's own. She leaned in, and Steven leaned in, and they came closer and closer--

A flash of light, and they were as close as they could possibly get. Stevonnie looked down at their hands and burst out laughing.

*

Stevonnie took a moment to laugh and hug themselves, giggly with the joy of  _being_ and light-headed with relief. Steven and Connie had missed each other, had thought about each other the whole time they'd been separated, had turned to share jokes and had remembered that the other was lightyears away. Being together again-- being whole again-- was like salve over irritated skin. Stevonnie took a deep breath and let their memories integrate, and the respective turmoils of their components calmed to an equilibrium. 

When they opened their eyes, everything confused had been made clear, and one thing was standing out like a lighthouse on a dark night: they needed to plan.

"What do I know about Homeworld?" Stevonnie asked aloud. "More than I did, sure, but still not enough. And Steven still can't read Gem, that's not gonna be good in the long run..." They dug out a notebook and pencil from Connie's backpack-- she had been hoping to plan at some point, too-- and pulled up Steven's memories from the past month.

 _Allies,_ they wrote at the top of the first page.  _Chocolate Pearl, Morganite, Rose Quartzes, Sea Glass (?)--_ Steven still needed to visit her, didn't he?--  _Zircons, maybe Aquamarine, Famethysts..._ Patuxent River Agate was mean to Chocolate and was kind of a no-show most of the time, so Stevonnie left her out. There were other gems who might be helpful, though-- Chocolate's friend Lavender Pearl was one, and so were Morganite's crew back on her colony, and those hijackers, and that Citrine, maybe. And a lot of gems were loyal to Pink Diamond-- maybe more, now that Steven had made that rule about bubbling instead of killing.

 _Changes,_ they titled the next list, and wrote  _bubble decree, finders keepers._ "Too many and things get weird," they reminded themselves. "What did Chocolate say? Maybe Steven can be sneaky about this. What would make gems not want to kill organic life?"

Connie remembered reading something about science education. Stevonnie wrote,  _make more zoos (?), assign gems to study organic life on new/older colonies, make a database of what's been lost/what's still out there and let gems see/read it._ What else?  _Gem Neil deGrasse Tyson?_ "No, that's weird," Stevonnie muttered, and erased it. "Is there a type of gem that could maybe be able to communicate with animals? What would it be called if there was?"

Tiger's Eyes were a gem caste, right? And maybe Serpentines? Stevonnie got the feeling that neither of those really had anything to do with animals. If gems had more zoos, though, except not with sapient life, maybe it could be like Earth. Connie knew a lot of kids who'd been made into environmentalists by zoos, and maybe zoos could serve as a way to preserve lost species even when colonization couldn't be stopped. That could count as a frivolous aristocrat thing to do, and gems couldn't say it was un-Diamond-like because Blue Diamond had done it first. 

From what Stevonnie could tell, though, Gems didn't have an Internet like Earth did. It was probably because free association historically led to rebellions and reform, which none of the higher-ups would like.  _Create Gem internet,_ Stevonnie added, and then they wondered if that was even physically possible. Oh, well, that was what brainstorming was for.

What else could be discreetly changed without making it seem like Pink Diamond was basically a Crystal Gem with a fancier paint job? There was the whole resource squeeze...  _make it more normal to train gems in things they weren't initially made for,_ they wrote. If that Citrine had been interested in technology, maybe other gems were, too. Pearl had learned how to build rockets! If she could have done that, maybe Zircons could learn how to make ships and Peridots could learn how to make art. And music-- maybe music could be made more common for everyone. It shouldn't just be for the upper classes.

Actually, why was it only for the upper castes-- oh. Stevonnie knew this one. More music meant more opportunities to dance, and more dancing meant more opportunities to fuse. That meant that either the upper classes  _did_ fuse, but only in private, or that-- much more likely-- they only listened to music in public settings or when they were sung to by their Pearls, so they never had the chance to fuse. Free distribution of music and what it was would lead to too much unsupervised fun, Stevonnie thought wryly, which would lead to more gems like them. That could destabilize a regime.

After all, Garnet's fusion had basically inspired the growth of the Crystal Gems and their whole ideological movement!

And trials... Steven had only been to one proper trial, but he'd passed judgment on other gems besides Morganite and Sea Glass. How did the Gem legal system work? He should ask the Zircons, when he gets back to Homeworld. Looking for bubbles would be important, too, since that would tell him how well his decree was being enforced, and who was doing the enforcing, and who was getting the brunt of the bubbling-- who  _had_ been getting the brunt of being shattered. Then maybe he could say _resources are important, this seems like you've been wasting a lot of them_ and have an excuse to get rid of corrupt administrators.

Of course, if a gem was truly corrupt they wouldn't be bubbling gems at all...

Speaking of corrupt, did Lavender Pearl belong to anyone? Was there a network of  _general use_ Pearls in the palace or something? That could get creepy, couldn't it, if it meant that anyone could give them orders and they'd have to obey... 

Stevonnie wracked their brain for other important questions, and a ton of them flooded into their mind. How many planets did the Empire have, aside from Homeworld? Did they keep record of colonies they'd used up, or did they just abandon and forget about them? Did each Court have its own things it tended to do? 

Wait, Stevonnie could figure that one out. Yellow Diamond seemed like she controlled a lot of executive stuff, like the military and tech stuff, and Blue Diamond seemed to have support and terraformers, maybe... what did White Diamond do, then? Did she choose new colonies, or review laws, or just keep the other Diamonds in line? And some terraformers were like Peridot, which meant they were Kindergarten technicians and still under Yellow Diamond's command, so Blue couldn't have all of them. Maybe Diamonds just did whatever they felt like doing and everyone else had to fall in line. So what would Pink Diamond be expected to do?

Rose Quartz had been hers, and they were medics, healers even if they were nowhere near Steven's power levels. Jasper and Eyeball Ruby had been under her command, so she had to have _some_ troops. She'd been known to be relatively nice, probably, but she wouldn't have had much exposure to other gems if she'd been sheltered for so long. 

Was Blue the opposite of Yellow? Did that make Pink the opposite of White? Stevonnie didn't know  _anything_ about White Diamond. That was a problem, too.

"This is a lot," they complained, leaning back against the wall of the bubble. A hermit crab crawled up the side and waved its claws at their face  "No wonder Steven's so stressed."  _Stevonnie_ was stressed, at this point, and they could already tell that as a fusion they could handle these problems a lot better than Steven could alone. An outside perspective to your own subjective experiences made strategizing a lot easier, and Connie had always had a leg up on Steven when it came to tactics. 

Too bad Connie couldn't come back with Steven to Homeworld.

Or, wait. Could she?

Stevonnie felt familiar resolve curl through their gem and heard:  _Yes, actually. I can._

*

Aquamarine was eight seconds from throwing her 'crew members' out of an airlock and finishing the job herself, so it was fortunate (for everyone else!) that the Nephrite chose that moment to land them on the moon base. Still, Aquamarine was annoyed.  _She'd_ been the one to point out the abnormalities on Bretta 5. She'd gone to Pink Diamond and everything, even if Pink Diamond had to turn out to be that _stupid_ organic who'd tricked her into giving up her mission by claiming to be  _Rose Quartz._ Why couldn't she have been sent alone, or with that Topaz fusion from last mission?

Or, she thought, suppressing an unwelcome spark of fear, maybe not the same Topaz. Not-- not  _that_ one. She'd taught Aquamarine an important lesson, when she'd rebelled, but Aquamarine wasn't sure she'd improved enough to take her on again. It was easy forgetting she was so new and small when she had her wand out and a bunch of pliant subordinates willing to follow her every command like they'd been made to do. It was a lot harder when she was being pinned to a wall by one gigantic hand, painfully aware that she could be poofed and shattered at a whim. Psychologicalcontrol was half the battle with inferiors. Aquamarine had gotten complacent. Had  _forgotten_ herself. 

She wanted to make sure she didn't do that again. 

But being sent out with a bunch of Ambers and a Nephrite without even being in proper charge of them? Was  _not helping!_

"All right, gems," Aquamarine declared. "This is a reconnaissance mission, not an offensive one. If we see any of those Corruption things, we'll not engage, yeah? We'll just take data and go."

"Right," the Nephrite agreed tentatively. "But my Aquamarine, what exactly are we looking for?"

Aquamarine suppressed a snarl of frustration. "Weren't you listening at _all_ when I debriefed you? We're looking for Corrupted gems. That means gems who've turned into great big beasts bent on destruction. Believe me, you'll know them when you see them. They should be on-planet, not here, though--  _we're_ just here to observe from a secure location and report back as soon as possible." It had taken so  _long_ to get here, too. The usual warp routes from Homeworld to Sector 7 had shifted, as happened sometimes, and when they'd tried to jump straight from 1 to 3 they'd ended up in  _12_ and had had to take a longer route to keep from being swapped farther from their destination than they were supposed to go.

Aquamarine had had the Nephrite update the warp logs, of course, so it wasn't a wasted experience, she supposed, but  _honestly._ Why had that had to happen  _now?_ It was incredibly inconvenient. 

They moved through the moon base-- much bigger than the base on Earth, because Bretta 5 was a much more important acquisition than that backwater planet-- silently, keeping their footsteps soft and their lights dimmed. The entire base was eerily quiet, darker than regulations required and devoid of gem presence; their feet left thick footprints in the iron-rich crimson dust. From the outside of the base, they could see Bretta 5 itself, its swampy surface obscured by its heavily clouded atmosphere.

Aquamarine had heard that Bretta 5 was a good place to be stationed if one were a higher-ranking gem, since the carefully cleaned interiors and artistic towers of the colony centers were some of the most avant-garde in the Empire; if one were an inferior gem, however, one could expect to be forced to work outside, draining the miles-deep swamps of life and water and fighting off giant marsh-beasts so that technicians could build Kindergartens on the rich clay ground. The temperature hiked to the boiling point of water every day as the ion storms were charged by the rays of the system's red sun, then cooled to near-freezing as the planet turned and the clouds went dark and started absorbing heat instead of giving it off. The planet wasn't anywhere near hospitable enough to house any real sapient life; the closest it had gotten were the marsh-beasts, great hibernating things that cloaked themselves in fermenting leaves and slumbered at the swamp floors, only waking at dawn and dusk to hunt. 

According to rumor, the first gems to drain a swamp and drill into the surface had woken an old one, nearly a mile across from head to tail, and had been shattered in its teeth. Bretta 5, accordingly, was assigned the greatest amount of Quartz soldiers in a colony without sapient life-- if it didn't, the technicians and terraformers on its surface would never stand a chance.

Aquamarine was  _very_ glad not to be going down to the planet itself.

"What's that?" one of the Ambers piped up into the silence, making her compatriots spark with surprise and nearly making Aquamarine draw her wand. She was pointing up at a shadowy mural on the upper level of the base. "My Aquamarine, do you see that?"

"Is that really something we should be discussing?" Aquamarine snapped. "We're on a mission, not some sort of-- of  _pleasure trip!_ We don't have time to be looking at artwork."

"It could be important, though," the tallest Amber pointed out. "My Aquamarine, if you'd allow us to take a look--"

Aquamarine, already gritting her teeth in frustration at how long it was taking just to explore this stupid base and wondering if Pink Diamond would be mad if she poofed the Amber right here, summoned her wings and flew up to take a closer look herself, cutting off the tallest Amber completely."It's a picture of some sort of gem," she reported, suddenly too distracted to be properly outraged at her subordinate's lack of respect. She hadn't ever seen any murals like this before. "She's gray, holding a Diamond's gem in her hands--" How  _blasphemous!_ Perhaps she could report this-- "With Diamond patterns on her body. She doesn't look like any of the Diamonds, though."

The smallest Amber glanced up at the ceiling, then materialized limb enhancers and clambered up the wall like an arboreal organic. "There's something like it on the ceiling, too," she said, voice trembling a little like she couldn't handle seeing anything strange or new. "It's a big circle, and it's got the Diamond's colors, but it's mostly gray. I don't know what it's supposed to be. Do you think it's a bad sign, my Aquamarine?"

"How should I know? I'm made for missions, not for  _aesthetic appreciation._ You'd do better asking someone's Pearl."

The Nephrite stared up at the mural, holding her gaze even when Aquamarine and the smallest Amber landed beside her. Then she perked up. "Oh! No, it's all right, my Aquamarine, I know what's going on. This planet used to be a prospective colony billions of years ago, but it was passed over because our technology wasn't advanced enough to root out all the minerals we needed yet. The original scouts built a moon base, though, so they could return later-- this was before even Blue Diamond's time! We must have landed at the wrong base."

"Right," Aquamarine said skeptically. "And you just happen to know all this?"

Nephrite gave a sheepish smile. "My first superior officer was a  _very_ ancient Emerald with a love for Gem lore," she explained. "I was her favorite pilot, and she had a special dispensation from the Diamonds themselves to record the past for their future reference, so sometimes she let me sit in on her work when I was off duty." Was the Nephrite  _blushing?_ Aquamarine couldn't begin to imagine why. "Anyway, I think the mural shows the Moon Goddess-- she was an old motif in a lot of ancient artwork. Gems used to think she really existed, and that she watched over Homeworld just like a Diamond would. Over time, though, White Diamond and Yellow Diamond began to dislike her worship, so they decreed that she didn't exist and that any gem worshipping her would be shattered. A lot of old Gem mythology stayed around, though, even as the primitive religion faded-- even on the colony on Earth, there was a Moon Goddess temple, though that was for the beauty of the motif rather than any belief in a primordial goddess herself. After the rebellion, though, the use of such mythological figures in art and architecture was stamped out completely."

"Huh." Aquamarine was reluctantly interested. "What happened to this Emerald, then? You can't have still been working for her, if you decided to desert."

The Nephrite smiled, but her eye narrowed. "She was harvested," she said lightly, "for being obsolete, for being defeated by an Emerald who coveted her position, and for sharing ideas that were considered treasonous by the Authority at the time. That was just during the Crystal Gems' rebellion, so the Diamonds were especially watchful for any signs of deceit or treachery."

Aquamarine tilted her head. "Ideas like the ones you just shared, Nephrite?"

The Nephrite shrugged and glanced at the tallest Amber. "I wouldn't think so," she said after a short deliberation. "But of course, it's up to you to decide that, my Aquamarine." Aquamarine paused, opened her mouth, and froze, suddenly cognizant of two facts: one, she was outnumbered in an abandoned base, and two, her death would be easy to blame on some Corrupted beast. Not that she even saw any signs of treason or rebellion, but--

She'd lost control so quickly, so totally, back on her last mission. She'd been weaponless and pinned, and how had Rose Quartz turned her own inferior against her so suddenly? Only a few moments, and the Topaz fusion was entirely on the traitor's side. Sentiment, Aquamarine had called it, but it had to have been something more. 

Rose Quartz had turned out to be a Diamond. That, Aquamarine thought, explained quite a bit. How else could that fusion have decided to attack her? Maybe the fusion hadn't known it, but she hadn't been feeling the compulsion to rebel at all-- instead, she'd been following the instinct to obey a Diamond's orders that all gems were programmed with, deep down. That had to be the explanation. It just-- the alternative, that the fusion could just  _snap,_ was unthinkable. They weren't programmed that way. Every gem had her purpose and her place. Rebellion didn't just  _happen._  If it did--

If it  _could--_

"I can't imagine how history could be harmful," Aquamarine heard herself saying with a shrug. "It's only an old mural. Why should I care what primitive gems thought before the Diamonds could set them right?" The Ambers were still looking up at the Moon Goddess mural, apparently enraptured. Aquamarine clapped her hands impatiently. "Come on, then, no more dilly-dallying! This base should still have monitoring equipment for the planet itself, shouldn't it?"

"I think so," the smallest Amber said with a nod. She was, Aquamarine couldn't help but notice, still a head and a half taller than herself. "It should be in the upper level, if the map holds true for this older base as much as for the new one."

"It might not," the tall Amber pointed out. "Maybe we should split up to investigate, my Aquamarine?" Still deferring. Still respectful. Aquamarine forced her shoulders loose. 

"That's a terrible idea," she scoffed, pushing back her unease. It was just because of the 'Corruption,' whatever that meant. That was all. "If we can't be sure what's happening here, why should we make ourselves easier prey? It's true that the emptiness is probably because this is the wrong base, but we still haven't properly searched for hostiles, have we? It's best to stick together."

The Nephrite nodded. "That makes sense," she agreed, and Aquamarine forced herself not to glare.

"Of course it does!" she said instead. "There's a reason I'm in charge, after all.  _I_ was the one who noticed something was wrong with the transmissions and approached Pink Diamond to ask for an investigation in the first place." Though she was beginning to suspect that Pink Diamond had saddled her with these criminals in order to punish her for her actions on his favorite planet. Why else would he have sent her out alone with four  _already rebellious gems_ without even giving them orders to obey her in everything? Aquamarine wondered if Pink Diamond meant for them to kill her.

That wasn't a thought for a superior gem to be having, though. She pushed it from her mind and looked around the eerily empty base instead. Perhaps it was better that she hadn't been sent to investigate this creepy place alone. If nothing else, the other gems would make for good distractions while Aquamarine got the mission completed. "We should go upstairs first," she decided. "There's a spire on the west side, isn't there?"

"Technically this moon doesn't have a clear magnetic field, so there wouldn't be--" the smallest Amber started, then flushed and cut off. "I-I mean, yes, my Aquamarine. We should go check that first."

They made their ways up the spiraling staircase and through the unlit hallways of the third floor, winding higher and higher with every step and tracking red dust behind them. Aquamarine was glad to note that there wasn't any dust anywhere that they hadn't already come through; that meant, she thought, that no one had entered the base since it had been discontinued and the maintenance gems had left it. 

At least, it meant that no other beings had touched the ground when they entered. Aquamarine really wished she hadn't considered that possibility now she thought of it. 

"Echo!" the medium Amber yelled at one point, when they'd just entered a gigantic auditorium. The sound bounced around--  _echo, echo, echo--_ and Aquamarine whirled on her in a panic. 

"Would you shut up? You could give away our position!"  _Our position, position, position!_ The Amber clacked her mouth shut and nodded meekly, and the group relaxed. The echoes continued, getting fainter and fainter, and then--

A heavy churning groan ground itself into their ears, rumbling discordant enough to set Aquamarine's gem on edge. She choked back a cry and drew her wand; around her, the Ambers sparked up their palms and the Nephrite materialized a blaster. "What's  _that?"_ the tallest Amber gasped. "That-- that's not-- that's not  _right--"_ A bolt of electricity screamed off her and slammed into the ground close to Aquamarine's feet, heating the dust red-hot and making her back up before her form was harmed. The other Ambers were also arcing with electricity, crackling painfully bright and making Aquamarine's hair stand on end. 

"Would you stop that?" she snapped. "Get a hold of yourselves!" Her wings wavered uncertainly at her back. If she flew-- how could she get out if she couldn't break through the ceiling--

The groan continued, getting louder and deeper the longer it went on, until it felt like it was grinding into Aquamarine's head-- into her  _cheek--_ and a hideous pressure started building up beneath her eye. She shook her head but couldn't dispel it. When she looked up, the tall Amber was clutching her hand to her chest, and the Nephrite was arched like something was wrong with her back. The two smaller Ambers-- one with a gem on the side of her head and one with it on her chest-- were similarly afflicted. The sound grew, and Aquamarine looked to the other end of the auditorium to see a flickering white light, spreading larger and larger and  _she couldn't see anything past it--_

Aquamarine flicked out her wand and threw a containment field over the other four gems, lifting them into the air with a practiced motion. Her face felt like it was splitting apart, and she was crying real tears, but her hands were steady. It must have been because she was a higher gem, she decided. Maybe whatever this was couldn't work as well on her--

No, no time to think about that now. She fled from the devouring light, dragging her incapacitated crew along with her, dodging back along their crimson-dust trail and into thinner, darker hallways, praying to the Moon Goddess that gems had apparently once believed in that the light wouldn't reach her. 

A dead end loomed up in front of her, and Aquamarine nearly slammed into it, then turned and saw to her horror that the open end of the hallway was lit bright as a star. Her containment field dropped, and the other gems fell to the floor in a heap, bleary with pain. She raised her wand at the encroaching  _thing_ and yelled, "Don't come any closer! I'll shatter you if you try!"

It kept coming. Aquamarine stepped back into the fading shadows, almost treading on the Nephrite's convulsing hand, and choked out, "Stay back! Stop, don't come any closer, stay  _back!_ That's an order!"

Her vision flared white with pain, and she dropped her wand to claw at her gem. It felt like it was trying to crush the rest of her, like it was trying to push out her mind and replace it with an endless distant fuzziness, a numb chilling pain, and--

Her mission, what--

What was her mission? She was here, but she didn't know where here was, just like she didn't know the wand at her feet, didn't recognize the little blue hands held up above it. The hallway was so bright, now. Why hadn't they simply turned on the lights? Why hadn't they--

"Oh, no," an unfamiliar voice choked out. "You-- hey, over here! Come in here!" An arm scooping her up, pressing her against a twitching orange body, leaning down and hefting something over its shoulder. "Stars, gotta move fast, gotta move  _fast--_ hold on, you're okay, you're gonna be okay."

"Easy for you to say," Aquamarine murmured irritably, pressure pleasantly receding, and then her endurance reached its limit and her body disappeared.  


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting a little weird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter, more like the other ones, because I'm trying to get back into the groove of writing this story and I went through like eight drafts for this, and if it were any longer I'd probably throw my computer across the room. Which would be regrettable.

Aquamarine reformed with a shout in her throat. She forced it back and made herself go quiet, made herself observe her surroundings. She was in what looked like an auxiliary observation room, meant for use by lesser gems when the main one was already occupied. Four other gems-- three Ambers, one Nephrite-- were piled in a corner, just under the observation sphere. All accounted for, then. Aquamarine looked them over for cracks and scratches and, finding none, levitated them over to a more defensible corner. That done, she summoned her wings, hovering as she checked the exits of the room (just one, and she was able to open it, though she kept it closed for safety's sake). How had they gotten here?

There had been that moron Amber's echo, and that sound, and that all-encompassing light--

And then they'd been incapacitated somehow, and Aquamarine had taken her crew and retreated, but she hadn't been able to escape, had she, and just before she'd been dissipated... oh. They'd been rescued.  

The door opened, jolting Aquamarine out of her reverie, and she had her wand out and sparking before she'd completely turned around. "Whoa!" the newcomer said, holding up her hands innocently. "There's no need to attack, I swear! I was just coming to see if any of you had reformed." Her voice was a loud whisper. "Are you okay? I'm sorry I scared you."

Aquamarine retracted her wand. "You didn't scare me," she corrected. "You startled me. It's not as if I wouldn't be able to take you in a fight." She didn't really feel the need to play up her _harmless_ act, however effective it could be around Quartz soldiers. It only worked if she knew the other gem would feel protective over a gem they saw as a civilian, anyway, and right now she didn't want to project an image of helplessness. They didn't know what had happened here, and if this newcomer-- probably their rescuer, definitely some sort of Jasper-- had been involved... "But thank you anyway, for rescuing us," she added a little grudgingly. "Can you tell me what happened here?"

The Jasper blinked. "Of course, my-- you're an Aquamarine, right? My Aquamarine. I'm Bumblebee Jasper Facet 29 Cut 9PP, under the command of the Laguna Agate assigned to monitoring colony security. I was sent out to look for survivors." She raised a yellow-and-gray-striped hand and scratched at her gem sheepishly. Her gem was situated just at her jugular. "And hey, looks like I found 'em."

Aquamarine cleared her throat. "Yes, I thanked you already," she reminded. "But could you please tell me what happened? What was that light, that sound? Why did it hurt our gems?" Her voice rose at the end, and the Jasper shushed her hurriedly. She fell quiet and glowered. "We were sent here to investigate what's been going on with this colony. If you have information that could assist us...?"

"Maybe we should wait for your crew members first?"

"I'm their commander," Aquamarine dismissed with a wave of her hand. It was technically true, wasn't it? "I'll fill them in when they reform."

"Right," Bumblebee muttered, glancing around nervously. "But let's get out of here first, please? This old place gives me chills. I'll fill you in on the way." 

They left the ancient base without further incident, Aquamarine levitating the four poofed gems as they traveled across the airless surface. "It started on the surface first," the Jasper told her as they walked. "Our Agate started getting shorter transmissions than usual, real vague stuff like 'objective completed' or 'all's good here' or whatever when the Beryl who usually runs the colonization process always gives huge amounts of detail. Then when she sent someone to spy on her, the spy stopped reporting."

"That sounds like a rebellion," Aquamarine commented, letting her eyes wander the crimson landscape. The moon had high, jagged mountains that reached farther into the sky than she could easily see-- no wonder they'd landed at the wrong base, having their views obscured like that. What had that Agate been thinking, leaving those eyesores intact?

"We thought that too!" Bumblebee agreed. Her voice was still hushed. "Like they decided to go rogue and strike out on their own, right?" She shrugged. "Except then we decided to observe the other parts of the surface, instead of just looking at the base itself. We started seeing these... things."

"Corrupted Gems." When the Jasper looked at her blankly, Aquamarine prompted, "Great big beasts with gems in them? Like to attack whatever they see and run about screeching?"

Bumblebee faltered. "You mean-- those things used to be gems? Like-- the same Bismuths and Peridots? That Beryl-- oh. We just thought they'd been driven out or poofed or something, even shattered. We didn't think they'd been-- Corrupted? You said? Shale."

"Yes, it's all bizarre," Aquamarine said impatiently. "That's why we're here, actually, so we can investigate all this. How many gems were there on planet? Official readings said three hundred?"

"Three hundred and two," Bumblebee corrected. At Aquamarine's look, she added awkwardly, "The... two Pearls, my Aquamarine. One belongs to the Beryl in charge of the base. The other belongs to the Sapphire stationed there."

"It's three hundred and one unaccounted for, then," Aquamarine said offhand. "We found shards for one of the Pearls."

The Bumblebee Jasper stopped in place, making Aquamarine stutter to a stop beside her. "Oh." Was she tearing up? Why?

Aquamarine wished she didn't have to deal with this. "What's wrong? Did you... know the Pearl?" Ugh, why did she have to deal with this  _now?_

"No," the Jasper sniffled. "No, I didn't know either of them, just saw them on visits planetside." She rubbed at her eyes with one gargantuan hand. "It's just... Pearls, y'know?" Aquamarine most certainly did _not_ know. She felt certain that her expression must have made that clear, but whatever the Jasper saw in her face must have included sympathy, because she kept going. "They're not made for fighting, j-just being pretty and nice and loving their gems. They're so fragile. And one of them just got left there to be shattered, and it was alone, and it must have been so scared--" Bumblebee blubbered, "I can't even imagine being stuck like that without my cohort, and I'm a Quartz!" 

"Why don't you act like it, then?" Aquamarine snapped. Bumblebee jerked back like she'd been struck. "You're a soldier, aren't you? _We're_ not Pearls. If you want to help, do it with action instead of with all this useless weeping."

Bumblebee wiped her eyes. "Right. Right, sorry."

Aquamarine sighed. "Let's just go on to the base, shall we? I'd like to get this mess sorted as quickly as possible."

They kept walking in silence. Eventually they reached the side of one of the mountains, and Bumblebee Jasper clambered up to brush dust off a door nestled into the rock. “It’s a back entrance,” she explained at Aquamarine’s incredulous look. “A couple of my cohort disappeared for a few days when they went to check out the old base, and recently the sound thing’s been kinda coming around. It just gets louder and louder, and then it poofs you. No one’s really sure what it is, but we figure it’s a native alien.”

A native alien that caused immense pain to Gemkind and made them lose track of their thoughts seemed like a bigger problem than Bumblebee Jasper was implying, but Aquamarine was in _no_ mood to contest the point. “We’d better get inside, then,” she conceded, and the Jasper smiled in a flash of teeth before creaking open the door. Another cloud of dust fell over the door from the outcropping above as she closed it.

This base had lights lining its white halls, though the red dust still seemed to inhabit every little nick and cranny.  There were footprints scattered through the dust, big thick ones that probably belonged to Quartz soldiers and smaller ones that looked like civvie gems next to them. It looked like they’d been using this entrance for a while. Bumblebee led Aquamarine to a side chamber and called, “Hey, guys, guess what? We’ve got visitors!” No response. Bumblebee frowned, looking a little nervous, and said, “Guys?”

Heavy footsteps clambered down the hallway, and a huge Carnelian came into view. “Bumblebee!” she said with obvious relief. “Thank the stars, we thought the sound thing got you.” She slowed and stared at Aquamarine. “Uh. Hello, my Aquamarine.”

“Where did that sound thing _come from?”_ Aquamarine demanded, glad of a new face. “And _why_ haven’t you reported it yet? I think I need to speak to your superior.”

"Of course," the Carnelian stammered. "Right this way." The soldier led them into a room filled with trees and shrieking animals; Aquamarine nearly jerked back until she realized it was a hologram, and then she had to pretend that she'd meant to draw her wand. Neither of the Quartzes noticed. "My Agate? We have visitors from Homeworld."

The Laguna Agate had cream-and-red skin and a gem at her shoulder; when she turned off the observation sphere and looked up, all the trees disappeared and were replaced by plain white walls. She clasped her hands together. "Visitors? My, but we weren't expecting an envoy from Homeworld for another century yet! What seems to be the problem, my Aquamarine?" 

"The problem," she snapped, "is the horde of Corrupted monsters running around on the surface of Bretta 5! Hordes that my Diamond only learned of when I saw fit to examine your transmissions and report them. _Not_ to mention your lack of damage reports after the destruction of Bretta 3. What have you been doing that's so important you've been neglecting your duties to Homeworld?"

The Laguna Agate stared; her cream-and-red skin flushed dark. "M-my Aquamarine, I had no intention of shirking my duties, we just thought that perhaps it would be better if we investigated on our own fi--" She stuttered to a stop mid-sentence, face going blank, and Aquamarine felt a shiver of unease. Fight it, she had to fight it, was she a gem or not? This was probably just some sort of defect in the Agate's programming.

She tried to sound more forgiving. "Does it have something to do with the sound creature?" No response. "This Jasper told me you'd been investigating on your own. Had you decided it wasn't a real concern or--"

"Who did you say it was that sent you?" 

Before Aquamarine could answer or demand what this stupid Agate thought she was doing interrupting her, Bumblebee Jasper said, "Blue Diamond, my Agate!" Aquamarine had actually said  _my Diamond,_ but being blue herself did give that a certain connotation she hadn't thought about. She decided not to correct them.

"Blue Diamond," Laguna Agate repeated. "Yes, I suppose that makes sense. You must have been traveling a long time. Would you like someplace to wait while your crew recuperates, my Aquamarine?" Wait, what? They were in the middle of a conversation! Then the Carnelian shifted behind them, seeming to stare with an odd intensity, and Aquamarine revised her opinion. A chance to recover her backup suddenly seemed like a good idea.

"That's the least you could do, yes," she said, trying to get back control of the situation. "But we have to talk after they've reformed. My Diamond sent me here to gather information, after all."

Laguna Agate smiled. "Of course. Bumblebee, would you be so courteous as to lead our guest to her own chamber? Thank you kindly."

"Of course, my Agate," Bumblebee Jasper said, glancing at Aquamarine, and then she moved back out of the room and into the hallway. Aquamarine followed her closely and tried to ignore how the Agate's eyes bored into her back.

* 

Morganite looked up as soon as Chocolate entered the room and was immediately on her guard. Chocolate Pearl was free-spirited for a Pearl, opinionated enough that it was a miracle she'd survived Homeworld so long at all and constantly guarded because of it-- but this wasn't her standard caution. There was a grim set to her shoulders that meant something was wrong, and a wariness in her eyes that meant she might bear the brunt of it. Morganite considered materializing her rapier and decided against it. "Chocolate Pearl," she greeted. "Is there something that requires my attention?" The two Quartz guards at the door-- Amethysts 8XJ and 8XH, if Morganite wasn't mistaken-- seemed to be looking at someone behind the Pearl. Morganite caught a flash of deep blue and revised her opinion of the situation from  _vaguely concerning_ to  _outright worrying._ That wasn't the color of any gem she knew.

The blue gem, another Pearl, came up beside Chocolate and gave a slight bow. "My Sapphire requests your presence, Morganite, and the presence of this Pearl as well."

"And of 6OP," Chocolate cut in uncharacteristically. Her hands were fisting in her dress. 

"You're certain?" Morganite asked her, and she nodded. Right, then. That would be a challenge and a half; now they'd have to take all the back routes to avoid anyone who might talk. The Rose Quartz had been kept to one corner of the palace and one corner alone, but there weren't any spires in those areas. They'd have to avoid encountering gems who weren't in the know. "In that case, I think I'll take 7XC as well. Amethyst--" She met 8XH's eyes-- "would you please get them for me? Meet us at this location." The Amethyst saluted and went.

"This is an urgent situation," the blue Pearl said with a hint of reprobation. "My Sapphire will not appreciate being made to wait." This Pearl moved like a bodyguard, not a servant, fluid and certain of every motion she took, and her expression was less neutral than it was laconic. Her Sapphire, then, would be unlikely to punish someone of a lesser type for being pragmatic. Morganite rose to her feet and turned to Chocolate. 

"Could you tell me what this is about?" Chocolate opened her mouth, then slapped her hands over it and flushed. She shook her head.

The blue Pearl glanced at her and said, "It has to do with a potential coup against Pink Diamond, and also with some visions that my Sapphire has had recently. She's... rather incensed."

"And your Sapphire is?"

"Star Sapphire 1AA, of White Diamond's court," the Pearl said promptly, and Morganite had to take a moment to reboot. It had been a long time since she'd heard  _that_ designation.

"She's called a few times to rant at Steven about her visions," Chocolate Pearl offered.

 "Yes," Morganite said, wondering where she'd been for _those_ calls. "She was rather famous, actually, in the sector I was assigned to." Morganite had been taken along with a then-superior and had conversed with some Quartz guards while her Beryl consulted the Sapphire about her plans for her new colony. The Star Sapphire had thrown a fit audible to those outside her chambers, had called the Beryl a rock-munching imbecile, and had demanded that she pull her troops out at once before she had some occurrences she'd regret. The Beryl had refused, and the entire planet had been smashed to pieces a century later as a result of an orbital anomaly-- a dwarf planet with an unstable orbit that had broken it up from the core. Thousands of gems had been shattered with it.

That was what Star Sapphire 1AA was famous (or infamous) for: her predictions were always disasters, when they were strong enough to take note of, and they nearly always came to pass. How _heartening_. 

"My Morganite?" That was 8XH back at the door, with a pair of Rose Quartz behind her. The blue Pearl's eyes widened at the sight of them. 

"Thank you, Amethyst." Morganite turned to the blue Pearl. "I'd like a moment alone with Chocolate Pearl, if you all would be so kind as to wait outside?" The blue Pearl bowed her head, and the Quartzes saluted and left the room. Then it was just the two of them. "What  _can_ you tell me about what's going on?" Morganite asked in a low voice. "You'll excuse me for being concerned, but this hardly seems like an auspicious time for a meeting with a  _Sapphire._ Why couldn't this wait until Pink Diamond's return, or for that matter  _before he left?_ Why now?"

Chocolate Pearl bit her lip. "It may... have to do with-- with  _that._ The... first thing. And I think the vision must have been rather recent."

Morganite thought back to what she'd just said. "It has to do with Pink Diamond's return?" The Pearl was acting like she was under orders... "With... an order he gave you?" Silence. "With an order that someone  _else_ gave you?" Now her hands were twitching. Getting closer. Who had Chocolate Pearl's previous owner been? Who else was authorized to give her orders? "With an order that Patuxent River Agate gave you, which related to Pink Diamond's return and some sort of coming catastrophe that has your involvement." Chocolate Pearl's eyes jerked up. "Something treasonous?"

Chocolate Pearl's hands flew back up to her mouth. Morganite pinched the bridge of her nose. "Magnificent.  _Just_ magnificent. Tell me, Chocolate Pearl, how is it that this empire can't survive  _two cycles_ without a Diamond? You'd think that having endless lifespans would mean we could get past all this-- this _nonsense_!"

Chocolate lowered her hands. "Apparently not, my Morganite."

"Wonderful. Are we in any danger from this Sapphire, Pearl?" Morganite wasn't naive enough to think that they were completely protected by Pink Diamond's regard, especially if there were something brewing against him already-- not to mention the fact that she was a convict and Chocolate Pearl seemed to be in some sort of trouble already. Not to mention the fact that they were the only ones who knew that the Rose Quartz had been  _allowed_ out, when any outside gem would call it high treason.  _That_ would look good in some wild-eyed rebel court.

" _You_ aren't in any danger," Chocolate Pearl offered. "The Rose Quartz shouldn't be, either."

Morganite gave her an unamused look. "And yourself, Chocolate Pearl?"

"The welfare of a Pearl is immaterial."

Now was perhaps not the time for rebellious statements, but... "Immaterial to  _whom,_ exactly? The welfare of a Diamond's Pearl is not  _immaterial_ to anyone, especially not to those under said Diamond's command. And if you mean to be telling me when and how I should be concerned, be advised that I do _not_ appreciate it."

Chocolate Pearl  _stared._ "I... I should not be in any more danger, my Morganite." Stars, this was making Morganite's gem ache more than the early days on Eta 11, and back then she'd had to deal with a hoardof confused terraformers. 

"Right. In that case..." She waved the other Pearl back in. "I suppose we've kept your Sapphire waiting long enough."

"Thank you, my Morganite."

The blue Pearl led them through the back corridors of the palace and up into the spires of the Northern wing. The Sapphire inside had a white dress with blue accents and a white diamond symbol at her collarbone; she was kneeling in the center of the blue-jeweled room, postured and perfectly still, and the air around her was biting-cold. "It's the strangest thing," she said as soon as they entered in a thin, acerbic voice, "but I could swear I asked you to  _kill_ her, Pearl." Chocolate visibly winced. Beside her, Morganite stiffened, and the two Rose Quartz tensed like they wanted a fight. She had  _what?_

"It  _is_ strange," her Pearl agreed calmly. "But I did ask you to trust my judgment, didn't I? She's much better alive, and you were overreacting anyway."

Star Sapphire 1AA whirled on her, jagged ice shooting out at her feet. It took a great effort not to flinch. "I  _never_ overreact," she snarled. "Every reaction I have is weighed against my visions  _without flaw,_ and they are always always  _always_ reasonable!" She stomped her foot, and the temperature nosedived into freezing. " _Every_ colony, every gem, every  _stupid little asteroid_ is about to die, and there's  _nothing we can_ do  _about it--"_

"Not panicking would be a good start," Morganite snapped, feeling a little thrill of fear at the higher gem's glare. The Rose Quartz went to guard the door from the inside, training obviously trumping worry, and watched them warily. "Unless you intend to keep yelling and never tell us what's going on?"

Star Sapphire turned on Morganite and glared. "There's a coup brewing against Pink Diamond, and if it isn't solved as quickly as possible it will kick off a chain of events that will lead to the fall of Homeworld's empire. This planet will fall to pieces beneath our feet, and Gemkind will become as nothing, and it will all end terribly. Are you smarter than that Beryl you used to serve, Morganite Facet 9 Cut 90HN, or were you complicit in the deaths of all those gems right along with her?"

"I didn't agree with her decision to ignore your counsel, if that's what you mean, your Clarity," Morganite said, trying and failing to keep her anger from her voice, "but that's irrelevant to the current discussion. _What_ chain of events? You aren't telling us anything useful, and you hardly have a Pearl's excuse of being ordered not to."

"I have had a vision," Star Sapphire said in a low voice, "of Homeworld's destruction. Not as a direct result of this coup's success but as a side effect. And  _that_ Pearl just set it off!"

"What part of  _orders_ do you not understand?" Chocolate Pearl burst out. "I couldn't  _not_ do it!"

"Not do  _what?"_ Morganite demanded. 

"Not strand Pink Diamond on Earth at her Agate's behest," Star Sapphire said. "She won't be able to return via the warp pad. There's a near-nonexistent probability that we'll be able to fix it before it's too late. The problem's digital, not mechanical, and it's been keyed to the same Peridot since its creation. That Peridot has already been shattered." Chocolate Pearl startled, staring open-mouthed for a moment before she schooled her face. Morganite just felt grim. 

"There's no other warp to Earth or its neighboring planets?"

"None in operation," Star Sapphire said. "And a ship could get there--"

"We'll send one!"

"-- but most realities show them being intercepted and destroyed before they reach the planet."

"This is more widespread than expected, then," Morganite said quietly. "If it's gone beyond Homeworld itself. What's the use of putting Pink Diamond on Earth for a few more days?"

"Information, probably," Chocolate Pearl suggested quietly. "She thinks he's a rebel impostor, and she wants proof. She sent someone after him before she had the warp pad disabled permanently."

"Do you know who, Pearl?" Morganite asked. "We could try to stop her when she returns."

Chocolate Pearl shrugged. "I didn't see her leave," she said, "but there was something in my orders about it. I expect that any gem sent after my Diamond to Earth would have to find another way to return."

"Then Patuxent River Agate and any allies of hers won't risk acting until then," Morganite said. It sounded more like hope than certainty even to her ears. "They'll want evidence."

"They'll get it, too," Star Sapphire said bitterly. "Unless Pink Diamond took a human form and lived on Earth without having any contact with the Crystal Gems still on-planet?"

"Not just contact," Morganite corrected, glancing at 6OP. "He lived with them. That could definitely be construed as evidence of his not having Homeworld's welfare in mind. Who would she have sent? Someone who could build a ship, maybe, or reactivate the original Homeworld warp--"

Someone cleared her throat near the door, and Morganite saw 6OP raise a hand. The Rose Quartz looked taken aback by how every other gem in the room turned to her. "Um, what about a gem that wouldn't need a warp? Lapis Lazuli can fly between galaxies on their own, and so can Aquamarines. Maybe she expects this gem to fly back on her own."

"So what do we do in the meantime?" Star Sapphire demanded. "If you say 'wait,' I'll explode. You can watch me."

Morganite said, "I'll call for a perimeter to be set up around Homeworld. Official word will be that we're expecting a rebel spy or some sort of attempted theft by pirates-- that recent problem with that organic in Sector Three already has gems on edge-- but they will be instructed to look for Lapis Lazuli and other flying gems specifically. Let the orbital guards deal with them. And-- if there's to be a coup, it could become violent on a larger scale. I'd like to prepare for that eventuality."

"Of course," Star Sapphire sighed. "Gather all the troops you need, or at least as many as you can. I'll contact some of my own acquaintances and see what they can scrounge up for me. We should coordinate our efforts."

"Of course, your Clarity," Morganite said, "and if I may suggest one more thing?"

"Go ahead," Star Sapphire said diffidently, and Morganite wasn't certain whether she liked or hated her. Still, she thought, glancing at Pink Diamond's Pearl. The sort of gem who would bully a _Pearl_...

"The next time you attempt to have one of my Diamond's court shattered," Morganite told her softly, mind made up, "I will make sure to retaliate in kind. And I won't send someone _else_ to do my work for me. Good day, your Clarity." She left, and the Rose Quartz followed. The Star Sapphire didn't speak up when they closed the door.

Chocolate Pearl walked fast to keep up with her and said in a low voice, "My Morganite, I'm not certain you should be making an enemy of our only ally." They detoured down a little-used hallway, and the Rose Quartz shifted their clothes to look more purple. Just Amethysts here, nothing to scrutinize. Just a normal cycle.

Morganite asked, "Who's making an enemy? We still seem to be working together, and I'm only enforcing a few boundaries. Any respectable gem would understand."

"But if she decides not to help us--"

"Then she will not be much of a loss, will she?" Morganite snapped. "Considering that her only message was a vague offer of help and a vision. She's told us the information we need; now there's only the need to act on it. No extra interference required. And if she chooses not to support Pink Diamond after all, she was an enemy to begin with."

Chocolate was quiet for a long moment. "It isn't wise to provoke a Sapphire, my Morganite."

"Yes, well," Morganite gritted out, "it's also unwise to provoke  _me._ Now _._ Is there anything preventing you from carrying out anything I might ask of you?" The Pearl shook her head. "Then I would like you to send word to that Aquamarine's expedition that they're to reroute to Earth and bring Pink Diamond back as soon as possible. I would also like you to use any means necessary to determine Patuxent River Agate's plans for carrying out this _rebellion_." The word tasted sour. "And--" She glanced at the two Rose Quartz-- "I would like you to arrange for the extraction of the remaining Rose Quartz to Eta 11. I'll send a message telling them to expect the arrival." 

"Are you certain, my Morganite?" Chocolate asked. "That could be construed as a power grab for _yourself,_ and you're not supposed to have any authority in that colony at all. If you havemade an enemy of that Sapphire, she would only have to point to that to have you removed."

"When I'm only gathering troops as she ordered? One would think she'd have a stake in keeping Homeworld together, considering that she's part of it." The Pearl still looked unconvinced, and Morganite said to convince her as much as herself, "If this doesn't turn out to be much of anything the Rose Quartz won't be necessary, and after the jubilee they won't have to hide at all. Everything will be taken care of before Pink Diamond returns."

If only she believed that herself.

*

Lars sat on the edge of the makeshift stage, poking at a few fake spiderwebs in the corner, and tried not to feel like he was leaving himself wide open to attack. A pair of roadies was working with the mechanisms that would let Sadie's plastic coffin rise up from under the stage behind him; every time they moved out of Lars's sight, he had to fight not to flinch or turn around. His hearing was better now. He could see every mote of dust in the air in front of him. There was no reason to be freaked out. 

"Hey, pink guy, could you move off the stage for a bit?" one of the roadies asked, and Lars grumbled and stepped into the dirt. The fairground didn't even have any good grass covering it, just a whole lot of dust and clumping weeds, and the funnel cakes were too soft to be properly cooked. Were those vendors even using an actual cake mold? God, Lars could probably take over and do better than them. He was like ninety percent sure they weren't even washing their hands.

Five hours till Sadie Killer and the Suspects performed. That gave Lars a lot of time to kill. He brushed a finger against the hem of his T-shirt-- no cape, why did that feel weird still-- and moved away toward the edges of the fairground. Maybe he could stay on his phone the whole time, at least until the battery ran down. Or he could track down Rhodonite and Padparadscha, since they were the only members of his crew who'd actually come, or hang with Steven and the Gems, or even sit in on Sadie and the Cool Kids' last minute rehearsal...

But who was he kidding, he didn't feel like people right now. If he did, he'd already be with them. Animals, on the other hand... hadn't Steven and Connie come in on that pink Lion of his? Where would he have gone?

... Where would Lars have gone if he were a cat with powers? Somewhere away from people, where things were quieter and no one was tramping around and disturbing his rest. Probably somewhere in the woods around the fairground. Lars closed his eyes and breathed in, out, unnecessary actions that still felt necessary enough, and tried to focus on his sense of smell. He'd noticed somewhere in the third planet they'd had to touch down on to resupply on their way to Earth that his sense of smell was just as enhanced as his sight and hearing. He'd been able to smell the surface after they'd crashed into a cave system-- had been able to taste the breeze in the air, able to hear the footsteps of Emerald's Citrine shock troops, able to see in the dark even though the only light came from his crew's faint forms. They had gotten sluggish in the caves as the days wore on from lack of light, which apparently was something gems needed to keep up their forms, and they'd had to take turns recuperating in his hair-dimension. It had made them all antsy as heck. 

He glared at a couple of people who wandered too close until they stopped staring at his pink skin and wandered off, and then closed his eyes again. He didn't know what he smelled like, but he'd met Lion before; he knew what to look for. A musky animal scent, topped off by something clean and utterly inorganic that was probably gem magic. It led down a small trail through the woods, so Lars glanced at his watch-- four and a half hours to go, great, and they wouldn't need any help setting up for three more-- and set off. His boots crunched on dead leaves. 

Huh, dead leaves. Sadie would want his help raking them up once they fell at home. She hadn't accepted his excuses about being tired or having inexplicable back injuries since he'd come back from space, probably because he was now a zombie and couldn't actually pull a muscle if he tried, and weirdly enough he hadn't actually  made that many excuses in the first place. Excuses made the Off-Colors look at him weird. 

 _Oh, no, I can't, I'm too tired,_ he'd say, and then the Rutiles would be like  _we believe in you, Captain Lars!_ and he'd have to go above and beyond to help out. It was so annoying.

Steven was annoying recently, too. He kept coming by with donuts from the Big Donut, never mind that Lars was sick to death of them even before he got kidnapped into space, and he wouldn't stop inviting Lars over to places. The arcade, Funland until he'd been banned again, Fish Stew Pizza, the lighthouse, anywhere outside of his house or his ship he could drag him to. Which was dumb. Lars wasn't a shut-in, and he wasn't an idiot, and just because he'd spent three months in space running for his life and responsible for all his  _friends'_ lives didn't mean he had any issues from it to work through. That would be ridiculous. And anyway he was back now, so that made it double ridiculous.

Lars went down the path for a while, listening half-heartedly to birdsong and trying to convince himself that he cared about nature. He wasn't exactly used to tracking any animal, much less by scent, and the smell kept going in and out of focus anyway. After a while he just walked for the sake of doing something and started to daydream. 

A twig cracked behind him and jolted him out of his thoughts; Lars jumped and whirled around, hands up to block a blow, and the guy behind him shrieked and dropped his cotton candy. "Shit, dude, what's with your eyes?" 

"Who cares about my eyes?" Lars shrilled. The guy was wearing a beanie and a three-piece suit, who did that? Lars tried to focus on that so he didn't have to think about how he felt like he was about to be attacked for _no good reason_. "Don't sneak up on people like that!"

"I'm just  _walking--"_ Lars groaned and stepped off the path, and Beanie Guy shouted after him. "You have freaky eyes, dude!"

"Yeah, thanks, I hadn't noticed!" Well, that was a peaceful walk ruined. Lars tried to catch Lion's scent again and couldn't smell anything but spun sugar, vaguely blue-flavored. What was blue flavor? Why did people claim cotton candy had flavors? He should look that up later, maybe make some... Wait. Lars stopped. There was a clean smell in the air, sparkly and lifeless, like rocks after a rain. Gem magic? But he didn't smell anything animalistic. "Lion? Is that you?"

The branches above him swayed slightly and dropped a few leaves and a caterpillar on him. Lars plucked a spiny caterpillar off his shoulder-- one plus of being dead was immunity to tiny stingers-- and placed it on a leaf. Huh. He must have imagined it. Or maybe Pearl or someone was hanging around and doing magic things. He didn't know their lives.

Farther down the path, the noises of the fairground were distant and muffled. Lars still couldn't find any signs of Steven's pink pet or of anyone else he knew, so he just found a likely-looking rock and sat down on it, shifting a little to get a good position. The weather was warm and sticky, so he gave in and took off his jacket, folding it over his lap instead. 

He spent a good twenty minutes playing Tetris on his phone, then stood and stretched, deciding to look for Lion again. Or one of his crew, or someone else from Beach City. Solitude was going from nice to boring as hell.

Another twig snapped behind him; Lars sighed and turned around. "Seriously? The fairground is the _other_ \--"

He choked on his words as something impacted his chest. A weird sensation crushed his lungs, not pain but  _pressure_ like the absence of it, and when he groped at his chest he saw a long metal handle sticking out of it, cutting through his shirt. Someone tall and lanky stood a few feet away and watched him. 

"Ah," she said in a clear, distant voice. "I thought you were a gem. My mistake. But if you're an organic, shouldn't you be dead by now? Humans have a blood pump where I stabbed you."

"Maybe," Lars wheezed, trying really hard not to panic, "but I've been dead for three months now. Don't need it anymore." He didn't recognize this gem, and he was willing to bet the Crystal Gems didn't know she was here.  _Shit._ "If-- you're looking for gems-- you're out of luck. They don't come this far out of Beach City." And in Beach City they had reinforcements and a whole lot of ways to avoid collateral damage, so if this gem would just leave him alone and go over there...

"Really?" The tall gem cocked her head; her skin, the same color as her jumpsuit, was a deep turquoise. "You seem to have a lot of information on them." She reached out a long-fingered hand and grasped the end of the spear. Lars glared at her with all the force he could muster and tried to keep from shaking in his boots. Coward, always such a coward-- "Perhaps I _should_ take you with me after all."

She jerked Lars to his feet, and the woods disappeared in a blur.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **SPOILER WARNING**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Okay so in Diamond Authority the Diamonds' sweat does NOT give spontaneous life to rocks/gems like it seemed to in 'Familiar.'
> 
> There are not little Pebbles in the walls, however adorable that actually is, nor are the walls/statues alive. Alternatively, and this is your choice here, they've always been there and no one's commented on them. They've just been there. Watching. 
> 
>  
> 
> _They've been watching for a very long time._  
>   
> 
> Anyway, revelations from Diamond Days about how gems are made, Pink Diamond's previous behavior (though the giant parties thing seemed pretty much the same tbh), or whatever else are probably not gonna be applicable.
> 
> Which I guess makes this officially an AU, if it wasn't already.
> 
> And, last thing: I'm posting this at midnight, so if I come back in the morning and see some egregious error it might end up edited. I'll be sure to leave a note detailing edits if they do anything to change the plot.


End file.
